The World Imagined
Taking an inter-disciplinary approach, Spruyt explains the political
organization of three non-European international societies from early
modernity to the late nineteenth century. The Ottoman, Safavid and
Mughal empires; the Sinocentric tributary system; and the Southeast
Asian galactic empires, all which differed in key respects from the modern
Westphalian state system. In each of these societies, collective beliefs
were critical in structuring domestic orders and relations with other
polities. These multi-ethnic empires allowed for greater accommodation
and heterogeneity in comparison to the homogeneity that is demanded
by the modern nation-state. Furthermore, Spruyt examines the
encounter between these non-European systems and the West.
Contrary to unidirectional descriptions of the encounter, these
non-Westphalian polities creatively adapted to Western principles of
organization and international conduct. By illuminating the encounter
of the West and these Eurasian polities, this book serves to question the
popular wisdom of modernity, wherein the Western nation-state is
perceived as the desired norm, to be replicated in other polities.
Hendrik Spruyt is Norman Dwight Harris Professor of International
Relations at Northwestern University. Among his publications are: The
Sovereign State and Its Competitors (1994), winner of the J. David
Greenstone Award; Ending Empire: Contested Sovereignty and Territorial
Partition (2005); and, with Alexander Cooley, Contracting States:
Sovereign Transfers in International Relations (2009).
LSE International Studies
Series Editors
George Lawson (Lead Editor)
Department of International Relations, London School of Economics
Kirsten Ainley
Department of International Relations, London School of Economics
Ayça Çubukçu
Department of Sociology, London School of Economics
Stephen Humphreys
Department of Law, London School of Economics
This series, published in association with the Centre for International Studies at
the London School of Economics, is centred on three main themes. First, the
series is oriented around work that is transdisciplinary, which challenges disciplinary conventions and develops arguments that cannot be grasped within existing disciplines. It will include work combining a wide range of fields, including
international relations, international law, political theory, history, sociology and
ethics. Second, it comprises books that contain an overtly international or transnational dimension, but not necessarily focused simply within the discipline of
International Relations. Finally, the series will publish books that use scholarly
inquiry as a means of addressing pressing political concerns. Books in the series
may be predominantly theoretical, or predominantly empirical, but all will say
something of significance about political issues that exceed national boundaries.
Previous books in the series
Culture and Order in World Politics Andrew Phillips and Christian Reus-Smit (eds.)
On Cultural Diversity: International Theory in a World of Difference Christian ReusSmit
The World Imagined
Collective Beliefs and Political Order in the
Sinocentric, Islamic and Southeast Asian
International Societies
Hendrik Spruyt
Northwestern University
University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre,
New Delhi – 110025, India
79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906
Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.
It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108491211
DOI: 10.1017/9781108867948
© Hendrik Spruyt 2020
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2020
Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd. Padstow Cornwall
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-108-49121-1 Hardback
ISBN 978-1-108-81174-3 Paperback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of
URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
The World Imagined
Taking an inter-disciplinary approach, Spruyt explains the political
organization of three non-European international societies from early
modernity to the late nineteenth century. The Ottoman, Safavid and
Mughal empires; the Sinocentric tributary system; and the Southeast
Asian galactic empires, all which differed in key respects from the modern
Westphalian state system. In each of these societies, collective beliefs
were critical in structuring domestic orders and relations with other
polities. These multi-ethnic empires allowed for greater accommodation
and heterogeneity in comparison to the homogeneity that is demanded
by the modern nation-state. Furthermore, Spruyt examines the
encounter between these non-European systems and the West.
Contrary to unidirectional descriptions of the encounter, these
non-Westphalian polities creatively adapted to Western principles of
organization and international conduct. By illuminating the encounter
of the West and these Eurasian polities, this book serves to question the
popular wisdom of modernity, wherein the Western nation-state is
perceived as the desired norm, to be replicated in other polities.
Hendrik Spruyt is Norman Dwight Harris Professor of International
Relations at Northwestern University. Among his publications are: The
Sovereign State and Its Competitors (1994), winner of the J. David
Greenstone Award; Ending Empire: Contested Sovereignty and Territorial
Partition (2005); and, with Alexander Cooley, Contracting States:
Sovereign Transfers in International Relations (2009).
LSE International Studies
Series Editors
George Lawson (Lead Editor)
Department of International Relations, London School of Economics
Kirsten Ainley
Department of International Relations, London School of Economics
Ayça Çubukçu
Department of Sociology, London School of Economics
Stephen Humphreys
Department of Law, London School of Economics
This series, published in association with the Centre for International Studies at
the London School of Economics, is centred on three main themes. First, the
series is oriented around work that is transdisciplinary, which challenges disciplinary conventions and develops arguments that cannot be grasped within existing disciplines. It will include work combining a wide range of fields, including
international relations, international law, political theory, history, sociology and
ethics. Second, it comprises books that contain an overtly international or transnational dimension, but not necessarily focused simply within the discipline of
International Relations. Finally, the series will publish books that use scholarly
inquiry as a means of addressing pressing political concerns. Books in the series
may be predominantly theoretical, or predominantly empirical, but all will say
something of significance about political issues that exceed national boundaries.
Previous books in the series
Culture and Order in World Politics Andrew Phillips and Christian Reus-Smit (eds.)
On Cultural Diversity: International Theory in a World of Difference Christian ReusSmit
The World Imagined
Collective Beliefs and Political Order in the
Sinocentric, Islamic and Southeast Asian
International Societies
Hendrik Spruyt
Northwestern University
University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre,
New Delhi – 110025, India
79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906
Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.
It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108491211
DOI: 10.1017/9781108867948
© Hendrik Spruyt 2020
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2020
Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd. Padstow Cornwall
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-108-49121-1 Hardback
ISBN 978-1-108-81174-3 Paperback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of
URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
The World Imagined
Taking an inter-disciplinary approach, Spruyt explains the political
organization of three non-European international societies from early
modernity to the late nineteenth century. The Ottoman, Safavid and
Mughal empires; the Sinocentric tributary system; and the Southeast
Asian galactic empires, all which differed in key respects from the modern
Westphalian state system. In each of these societies, collective beliefs
were critical in structuring domestic orders and relations with other
polities. These multi-ethnic empires allowed for greater accommodation
and heterogeneity in comparison to the homogeneity that is demanded
by the modern nation-state. Furthermore, Spruyt examines the
encounter between these non-European systems and the West.
Contrary to unidirectional descriptions of the encounter, these
non-Westphalian polities creatively adapted to Western principles of
organization and international conduct. By illuminating the encounter
of the West and these Eurasian polities, this book serves to question the
popular wisdom of modernity, wherein the Western nation-state is
perceived as the desired norm, to be replicated in other polities.
Hendrik Spruyt is Norman Dwight Harris Professor of International
Relations at Northwestern University. Among his publications are: The
Sovereign State and Its Competitors (1994), winner of the J. David
Greenstone Award; Ending Empire: Contested Sovereignty and Territorial
Partition (2005); and, with Alexander Cooley, Contracting States:
Sovereign Transfers in International Relations (2009).
LSE International Studies
Series Editors
George Lawson (Lead Editor)
Department of International Relations, London School of Economics
Kirsten Ainley
Department of International Relations, London School of Economics
Ayça Çubukçu
Department of Sociology, London School of Economics
Stephen Humphreys
Department of Law, London School of Economics
This series, published in association with the Centre for International Studies at
the London School of Economics, is centred on three main themes. First, the
series is oriented around work that is transdisciplinary, which challenges disciplinary conventions and develops arguments that cannot be grasped within existing disciplines. It will include work combining a wide range of fields, including
international relations, international law, political theory, history, sociology and
ethics. Second, it comprises books that contain an overtly international or transnational dimension, but not necessarily focused simply within the discipline of
International Relations. Finally, the series will publish books that use scholarly
inquiry as a means of addressing pressing political concerns. Books in the series
may be predominantly theoretical, or predominantly empirical, but all will say
something of significance about political issues that exceed national boundaries.
Previous books in the series
Culture and Order in World Politics Andrew Phillips and Christian Reus-Smit (eds.)
On Cultural Diversity: International Theory in a World of Difference Christian ReusSmit
The World Imagined
Collective Beliefs and Political Order in the
Sinocentric, Islamic and Southeast Asian
International Societies
Hendrik Spruyt
Northwestern University
University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre,
New Delhi – 110025, India
79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906
Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.
It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108491211
DOI: 10.1017/9781108867948
© Hendrik Spruyt 2020
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2020
Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd. Padstow Cornwall
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-108-49121-1 Hardback
ISBN 978-1-108-81174-3 Paperback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of
URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
The World Imagined
Taking an inter-disciplinary approach, Spruyt explains the political
organization of three non-European international societies from early
modernity to the late nineteenth century. The Ottoman, Safavid and
Mughal empires; the Sinocentric tributary system; and the Southeast
Asian galactic empires, all which differed in key respects from the modern
Westphalian state system. In each of these societies, collective beliefs
were critical in structuring domestic orders and relations with other
polities. These multi-ethnic empires allowed for greater accommodation
and heterogeneity in comparison to the homogeneity that is demanded
by the modern nation-state. Furthermore, Spruyt examines the
encounter between these non-European systems and the West.
Contrary to unidirectional descriptions of the encounter, these
non-Westphalian polities creatively adapted to Western principles of
organization and international conduct. By illuminating the encounter
of the West and these Eurasian polities, this book serves to question the
popular wisdom of modernity, wherein the Western nation-state is
perceived as the desired norm, to be replicated in other polities.
Hendrik Spruyt is Norman Dwight Harris Professor of International
Relations at Northwestern University. Among his publications are: The
Sovereign State and Its Competitors (1994), winner of the J. David
Greenstone Award; Ending Empire: Contested Sovereignty and Territorial
Partition (2005); and, with Alexander Cooley, Contracting States:
Sovereign Transfers in International Relations (2009).
LSE International Studies
Series Editors
George Lawson (Lead Editor)
Department of International Relations, London School of Economics
Kirsten Ainley
Department of International Relations, London School of Economics
Ayça Çubukçu
Department of Sociology, London School of Economics
Stephen Humphreys
Department of Law, London School of Economics
This series, published in association with the Centre for International Studies at
the London School of Economics, is centred on three main themes. First, the
series is oriented around work that is transdisciplinary, which challenges disciplinary conventions and develops arguments that cannot be grasped within existing disciplines. It will include work combining a wide range of fields, including
international relations, international law, political theory, history, sociology and
ethics. Second, it comprises books that contain an overtly international or transnational dimension, but not necessarily focused simply within the discipline of
International Relations. Finally, the series will publish books that use scholarly
inquiry as a means of addressing pressing political concerns. Books in the series
may be predominantly theoretical, or predominantly empirical, but all will say
something of significance about political issues that exceed national boundaries.
Previous books in the series
Culture and Order in World Politics Andrew Phillips and Christian Reus-Smit (eds.)
On Cultural Diversity: International Theory in a World of Difference Christian ReusSmit
The World Imagined
Collective Beliefs and Political Order in the
Sinocentric, Islamic and Southeast Asian
International Societies
Hendrik Spruyt
Northwestern University
University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre,
New Delhi – 110025, India
79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906
Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.
It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108491211
DOI: 10.1017/9781108867948
© Hendrik Spruyt 2020
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2020
Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd. Padstow Cornwall
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-108-49121-1 Hardback
ISBN 978-1-108-81174-3 Paperback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of
URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
For Lucy Eleonore Lyons,
mijn levensgezel
Contents
List of Figures
Preface
Acknowledgments
A Note on Transliteration
page ix
xi
xiii
xv
1 Introduction
1
Part I Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
2 The Historical–Sociological Approach to Understanding
Order in International Systems
15
3 Collective Beliefs and Visions of Order
34
Part II
The East Asian Sino-centric Order
4 Gathering All under Heaven: East Asian Collective Beliefs
and International Society
5 The East Asian Interstate Society and the Westphalian
System
Part III
83
133
The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
6 Lords of the Auspicious Conjunction:
The Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires
and the Islamic Ecumene
167
7 Collective Imagination and the Conduct of Interpolity
Relations
214
vii
viii
Contents
Part IV Collective Imagination among the Polities
of Southeast Asia
8 The Galactic Polities of Southeast Asia
253
9 Interstate Relations and the Encounter with Colonial
Powers
284
10 Conclusion: Viewing the World in One’s Own Image
326
Bibliography
Index
353
390
Figures
4.1
8.1
8.2
8.3
8.4
9.1
The cosmic design schematic
Basic mandala design
Symbolism and layout of Angkor Wat
The Mataram state
The Negri Sembilan
Political organization of Ayutthaya
page 112
265
271
276
277
290
ix
Preface
This book is a book of trespass. Taking to heart Max Weber’s exclamation
that he was “not a donkey and did not have a field,” I admittedly trespass
across fields. (I will remain mute on the other element of his quip.)
Interdisciplinary work across fields, often advocated and extolled, in practice encounters numerous barriers in its transversal attempts. Where one
reader finds too much social science and not enough history, another will
decry too much history and too little science. Anthropologists uneasily
engage with historians,1 political scientists decry the lack of rigorous causal
explanations in historical studies, and so on. Even within the same disciplinary fields, multiple perspectives and intellectual orientations abound.
One person’s icon is another’s bête noire.2 Methodological and epistemological proclivities diverge, compounded by variant political views. Thus,
even my field (if I had to pick one simply based on the origin of my wages),
the field of international relations, is populated by Realists, Liberals,
Constructivists, Post-Modernists, and numerous variations thereof.
Nevertheless, I make no apologies for my trespass. I start from the
premise that we write for each other in the broadest sense of our common
intellectual pursuit. Scholarship should not confine itself to a small group
of professional academics working in minutely defined subfields. For that
reason as well, I make no apologies for working largely with secondary
materials rather than attempting to delve deeply into primary sources.
Interdisciplinary approaches must, and gladly, avail themselves of the
extraordinary work of historians, anthropologists, and others who have
mastered Sanskrit, Ottoman, Tibetan, Mongolian, and Manchu and who
know how to evaluate the credibility of the “official” histories of the Ming
Dynasty or the Ottoman records. I assume as well that the specialists in
1
2
See Geertz’s remarks regarding the disquietude in anthropology. Geertz 2000, 89–97.
To stay with Geertz as an example, his book Negara, an account of the theater state in Bali,
is widely acclaimed, though others, such as M. C. Ricklefs, himself an acknowledged
scholar of Indonesian history, considered it doubtful that “it would be regarded as making
a serious contribution.” Ricklefs 1983, 185.
xi
xii
Preface
those fields aim to write for scholars who are not conversant in those
languages, or less adept in navigating the archival records.
This book focuses on two major issues. First, I aim to demonstrate how
collective beliefs influenced the political organization of several early
modern, non-Western, international societies. In the process, I suggest
how collective belief systems should be studied by looking at their material manifestation in rituals, dominant narratives, architecture, and
institutions. Second, I discuss how these societies conducted their interpolity relations and how they confronted the European powers and the
Westphalian state system.
To address these issues, I have inevitably been drawn into discussions
of what it means to do “global history.” What are the epistemological and
methodological quandaries one has to address? And what choices does
one have to make? As a result, the project has also become a self-reflection
on the very concepts and tacit knowledge that we deploy to understand
our own world. In illuminating the means by which we designate others as
different, or uncivilized, we shed light on our own preconceptions.
These reflections also altered the initial sentiments with which
I approached the questions at hand. While my previous work made me
well aware that the Westphalian state system certainly did not arise in its
final form, adult at its birth as it were, I had not paid sufficient attention to
how the articulation of difference from the conceptualized Other (defined
in multiple ways) influenced the development of the Western state system
in its current form. Indeed, the differentiation from this Oriental and
Islamic Other provided the means to exorcise the hybrid forms of rule that
had populated Europe itself. The encounter of the West and “the Rest”
was not an encounter of two rigidly defined systems but a dyadic encounter in which both came to redefine their identities and the political and
social expressions of those identities.
Acknowledgments
In the course of this work, I have incurred multiple debts to colleagues and
students, and I have made many friends in the process. The idea for this
book first emerged in conversations with my friend Kaya Şahin, now
professor in history at Indiana University. We both firmly believe in the
invaluable cooperation between historians and social scientists. A workshop
on imperial administration at Northwestern University’s Buffett Center
started us on a course of collaboration that continued in the Inter-Asian
IV Connections workshop at Koç University in 2013. I thank the participants at the workshop for their comments, particularly Cemil Aydin, Chris
Atwood, Ji-Young Lee, and Ted Boyle.
An invitation by Tim Dunne and Chris Reus-Smit to participate in
a workshop at University of Queensland in Brisbane and again at an
International Studies Association workshop in New Orleans gave me
another opportunity to explore the comparative history of Eurasian
empires. They and the other participants provided invaluable feedback
on some ideas that became a chapter in their edited volume The
Globalization of International Society. The spirit of that book informs my
research as well.
Furthermore, I owe special thanks to Saeyoung Park, who organized
a symposium on David Kang’s work at a conference of the American
Association for Chinese Studies. That symposium culminated in a special
issue of the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies.
Various parts of my work were also presented at International Studies
Association panels and at the Buffett Institute. I thank my colleagues on
the panels and the audience for their views.
Years ago, Maris Maeve O’Tierney approached me with a request to be
my research assistant as she commenced her undergraduate studies.
Lucky for me, I recognized incipient talent. Over the course of writing
this book, she has gone on to acquire an advanced graduate degree and
develop her multidimensional talents in the social sciences, humanities,
and arts. Throughout this period, she was far more than a research
assistant, and she provided key insights and critiques of her own.
xiii
xiv
Acknowledgments
Interdisciplinary work that covers lengthy historical periods and multiple
regions requires a considerable investment of time and energy. I am thus
deeply grateful to the deans of Weinberg College and the administration of
Northwestern University for providing me with sabbatical leaves to develop
my thoughts. During these leaves, colleagues at Sciences Po, Cambridge
University, and the London School of Economics and Political Science
were gracious hosts who provided me the opportunity to do research in
some of the most stimulating intellectual climates anywhere.
The list of colleagues and friends to whom I owe debts of gratitude is
a lengthy one. Should an attentive reader fail to see one’s name, please
ascribe this to feeble memory rather than a sin of commission. Kaya
Şahin, Lerna Yanik, Ayşe Zarakol, and Saeid Golkar provided me with
key comments on the Islamic empires. Ji-Young Lee, Saeyoung Park,
David Kang, and Prasenjit Duara were extremely helpful in their remarks
with regard to my work on the Sino-centric order in East Asia. My
department colleagues Elizabeth Hurd and Michael Loriaux likewise
provided trenchant critiques and valuable suggestions. Jason Sharman,
besides being one of the most prolific authors I know, was incredibly
generous with his time and input. While I did not inflict my chapters on
George Lawson and Barry Buzan, I greatly benefitted from their suggestions in the conversations we had about my work while I was at the
London School. Naturally, the work of all these colleagues has greatly
influenced my own thoughts.
Last, but certainly not least, I owe my sincere gratitude to the anonymous referees who read this manuscript. I was impressed by their keen
insights, suggestions, and profound views. While all were positive and
encouraging, needless to say, points of difference remain. If some fail to
see all their recommendations in this book, it is not because of inattention
but in the hope that we can continue to articulate our various intellectual
positions in future discussions.
My most profound debt, however, as always, goes to Lucy Lyons, my
spouse, sounding board, critic, supporter, and life partner. Besides reading every chapter multiple times and providing comments and suggestions, she reminded me of perhaps the most critical step in research: get it
out there. Books, although completed, are never finished; they simply are
steps in an ongoing and shared journey of discovery.
A Note on Transliteration
Every author who studies the history of multiple regions confronts
a challenge in the conversion into English of proper names, terms, and
geographic identifications. Among the Islamic empires, names and terms
vary across multiple languages, such as Persian, Arabic, Ottoman, and
Hindi. Even within the same empire, multiple languages could be used, as
was the case for the Ottoman Empire. The same is true for names and
terms across East and Southeast Asia. Conflicting schemes in transliteration complicate matters further, and the specialist scholars often acknowledge the choices they have had to make in their efforts.
Consequently, I have opted for a minimalist transliteration scheme
emphasizing simplicity and consistency. I use few diacritical marks,
except when quoting works verbatim or when such marks are commonly
used. Terms and names that have become familiar in their anglicized
version are given without italics. Less common terms are italicized. For
the Romanization of Chinese names, I have followed Pinyin, except
where the Wade–Giles transliteration has become entrenched or when
I cite a particular author using that system. My hope is that the general
reader will sufficiently recognize the names and terms across the inevitable variations in order to follow my argument.
xv
1
Introduction
To study the imagination of a society is to go to the heart of its consciousness and historical evolution.
Jacques le Goff
A historically minded generation is one which looks back, not indeed for
solutions which cannot be found in the past, but for those critical
insights which are necessary both to the understanding of its existing
situation and to the realization of the values which it holds.
E. H. Carr
1.1
Introduction: The World beyond Europe – Empires
without End
Before today’s nation-states there were world empires. Before presidents
and prime ministers there were lords of the auspicious conjunction – the
alignment of the heavens and planets heralded their arrival. Such rulers
were world conquerors, heirs of Alexander the Great and Chinggis Khan.
They were Chakravartin, universal rulers who brought justice and order
to mythical chaos. They were Sahib Qiran, king of kings. They were the
conduits between heaven and earth.
Many rulers have claimed such stature across continents and throughout history. Early Modern European sovereigns were no different.
Carolingian and German emperors legitimated their authority by claiming to be the heirs of classical Rome, and thus rightful rulers of the Roman
imperial space, the Christian Commonwealth, indeed, rightful rulers of
the entire world – symbolically captured by imperial regalia such as the
imperial orb.
An historical juncture occurred in the course of the late Medieval and
Renaissance periods, arguably commencing as early as the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries. From then on European conceptions of rule started
to move away from universalistic and imperial conceptions to the radically different notion that authority should be conceived as spatially
defined and delimited. The claims of Charles V, the Holy Roman
1
2
Introduction
Emperor, to rule all of Christendom in the early sixteenth century constituted some of the last claims of universalist rule in Europe.1
The Treaty of Augsburg (1555) and the Peace of Westphalia (1648)
became iconic markers of this historical development. The latter came to
denote the current system of sovereign territorial states as the
Westphalian states system, even though the full articulation of that system
only occurred in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The gradual transition to a system of sovereign territorial states thus
started centuries before the Peace of Westphalia, and continued for
centuries after, even if the Peace of Westphalia is often used as shorthand
to indicate this change. Indeed, it became eponymous with the international order that emerged in Europe.
The Westphalian system has several foundational principles. Authority
claims are territorially defined and delimited, stretching to the border and
no further. Within this defined territory, government is sovereign and
exercises full authority throughout the realm. It is not beholden to any
higher authority beyond the borders of the polity, unless the state has
conceded such authority by choice. The mutual recognition of territorial
limits to authority logically establishes the creation of mutually agreed
borders. The Westphalian system defines states as juridical equals and as
the constitutive actors of the international system. As Harry Hinsley
defined it, “the idea of sovereignty was the idea that there is a final and
absolute political authority in the political community . . . and no final and
absolute authority exists elsewhere.”2
This political development did not occur in the rest of the Eurasian
continent.3 The three most prominent empires of the Islamic world
(Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal), the Chinese Empire, and dynasties in
East and Southeast Asia all claimed universalist rule. Consequently, the
emerging European system of sovereign states, with its mutually recognized territorial limits to authority, stood in tension with the logic of
universal empire. Universal empire in principle recognizes no equal and
sets no limits to its own extension. As Jupiter proclaimed for the destiny of
Rome in Virgil’s laudatory proclamation, “For these I set no bounds in
space or time; but have given empire without end.”4
1
2
3
4
There certainly were expansionist drives, such as those of Napoleon and Hitler, but they
differed from the universalist claims of their predecessors who conceived of authority in
nonspatial terms.
Hinsley 1986, 26. See also Benn 1967; and Hinsley 1969. For full discussions of the
emergence of the system, see Spruyt 1994; and Krasner 1999.
Friedrich Kratochwil likewise notes the uniqueness of the European configuration of
material and ideational factors when compared to non-European systems. Kratochwil
1986.
Virgil 1916, verse 254.
Introduction
3
Rulers in such universalist systems thus legitimated their authority on
quite different grounds than sovereigns in the Westphalian system. Vastly
different visions informed the Westphalian polities of Europe and the
universalist polities of Asia and the Middle East. The rulers and societies
of both types of polity had specific and divergent views of what the
material and social world was as well as what the material and social
world should be.
But while universalist monarchs proclaimed to rule without limits to
their authority, in reality their powers to command and control were
limited by those of their rivals. Power radiated from the center, diffusing
into frontier zones in which overlapping claims to authority were common. In practice, therefore, merchants, warriors, and rulers interacted
across shared space in these contact zones. As global history has reaffirmed, none of these regions beyond Europe constituted closed systems.5
Politically, culturally, and militarily, dense zones of interaction existed in
the Middle East and Asia.
Despite the fundamentally different conceptions of authority and rule
in universalist empires and the Westphalian state system, a substantial
amount of scholarship in international relations still claims that relations
between such polities conformed to similar patterns of behavior, patterns
analogous to the behavior of today’s state system.6 Actors, be they classical Greek city-states, universalist world empires, or modern nation-states,
interact with each other in ways that we can readily comprehend, and
their actions follow similar patterns of behavior. We can thus grasp
Thucydides’ writings, or Pericles’ orations, on the same terms as the
classical Greeks did. We can thus unproblematically claim that the motivations behind the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta must
have been the struggle for power in a bipolar world, not dissimilar to the
Cold War contest of the United States and the Soviet Union. Their world
and ours are one and the same.7
Particularly in the Structural Realist reading of history, the condition of
anarchy – the absence of hierarchy in the world system – is taken as the key
5
6
7
For all the insights of contemporary studies in global history, it might be worth recalling
that William McNeill already spoke of the Eurasian ecumene as present at the beginning of
the first millennium. McNeill 1963, 295.
The term “inter-national” relations already conveys our specific, modernist view of relations between polities. We are prisoners of our own language and the concepts by which
we understand our world. In Chapter 3 I discuss this more fully and justify my choice to
use concepts such as “state” and “international” even though the early modern polities
were neither states in the modern Weberian sense nor nations.
Thus Robert Gilpin and Kenneth Waltz, among others, have read Thucydides’ account of
the Peloponnesian War as a useful account of the past and as a guide for the future. Gilpin
1981; Waltz 1979.
Introduction
4
determining feature of international relations. Given the condition of
anarchy, order in international systems hinges primarily on the distribution of power. Analysis of such distribution thus suffices to explain politics
across time and space. “International structures vary only through
a change of organizing principle, or, failing that, through variations in
the capabilities of units.”8 Structural Realism thus argues that order
hinges on the presence of one dominant actor (a view shared by hegemonic stability theorists), or a stable balance of power among the Great
Powers. Consequently, changes in the relative distribution of power are
inherently dangerous. Indeed, some see major power war as inevitable
due the current rise of China and the relative decline of the United
States.9 Structural Realism in this sense adheres to a positivist epistemological view.10
To the extent that a positivist view acknowledges any principles and
rules to regulate international behavior, it adheres to a thin view of
society: actors only create such principles instrumentally to obtain particular benefits through material or economic cooperation. Cultural perspectives, morality, or normative considerations rarely play a role. If they
do figure into such accounts they operate merely as the veneer for underlying “real” motives of material interest.11 I contend that such scholarship
misconstrues the non-Western world, misunderstands motivations in
politics and individual action, and fails to recognize multiple sources of
social order in international relations.
1.2
Toward a Cultural Understanding of International
Society
One of the main objectives of this book is to dispel such a positivist and
rarified empiricist view of history and of international relations. As
I discuss in greater detail in the next chapter, a positivist perspective
assumes that the methods applicable to the natural sciences are equally
8
9
10
11
Waltz 1979, 93.
John Mearsheimer and adherents of long cycle theory believe that major power wars are
strongly related to the decline of the extant leading power and the rise of contenders.
Hence, the rise of China will likely lead to a major power conflict. As he notes, “great
powers do not merely strive to be the strongest great power . . . their ultimate aim is to be
the hegemon – that is, the only power in the system.” Mearsheimer 2006, 160. For
a discussion of Long Cycle Theory, see Goldstein 1988.
For a discussion of the positivist foundation of Structural Realism, see Dunne 1998,
15–16.
See, e.g., the discussion of the relevance of cultural values and differences between the
feudal order and the modern state system in Ruggie 1993. Markus Fischer’s 1992
argument that international politics is always the same is decisively rebutted by Hall
and Kratochwil 1993.
Introduction
5
suitable for the social sciences. It draws no distinction between the
observation and study of natural objects and social phenomena.
Consequently, the study of meaning is superfluous. Moreover, the
study of the natural and the social world should aim toward cumulative
knowledge containing nomothetic statements.12
However, as the following chapters demonstrate, the non-European
orders that are the subject of this book were based on shared sets of beliefs
regarding the nature of the material and social world around them.
Religious and cosmological beliefs served as models on which the political
order should be based. They served as exemplars and reference points to
justify and legitimate authority. In order to fathom their world – and
thereby gain insight into the limitations of our own understanding –
historical study and contextual nuance are critical.
I argue that the positivist perspective – the view that our understanding
of international relations across history is universally valid – is itself the
product of our own cognitive biases, of our own broad sets of beliefs that
influence how we see the social and political world hinge together. I thus
join a large body of scholarship that has favored an interpretivist and
societal approach to the understanding of international systems and
societies.13 I develop a historically informed account of international
societies in the early modern period till the late nineteenth century to
demonstrate how specific norms and principles informed the polities
beyond the Westphalian system. Distinct from accounts that focus on
the instrumental calculation of actors, I advance the claim that international societies fundamentally revolve around shared conceptions of the
political and social world. International societies consist of interacting
polities that have in common a similar perspective of the ontology of the
system of which they are part. Their interactions and dispositions to each
other conform to a particular pattern, and they form an international
order. As Jacinto O’Hagan describes, international societies consist of
polities that are bound together by webs of meaning that “are embodied in
shared institutions and codes of rules that help to govern interaction
among members and differentiate them from those outside this intersubjective realm.”14
12
13
14
Exemplified by the “unity of science” approach, such as that expounded by the Vienna
Circle, and Otto Neurath as one of its proponents. Neurath argued for the “elimination of
unempiricist statements” in order to create “a lingua franca of unified science.” Neurath
1944, 2.
Tim Dunne and Christian Reus-Smit persuasively draw no distinction between system
and society. International society is “a particular kind of social structural formation,
preceded by, and embedded within, wider networks of global social and political interaction.” Dunne and Reus-Smit 2017, 33. In short, all systems are social.
O’Hagan 2017, 185.
6
Introduction
In taking a historical-interpretive approach, this book thus seeks to
dispel some positivist misconceptions.15 But positivist approaches are
not alone in misconstruing the non-Westphalian societies. Historically
informed scholarship has made errors as well. Some scholars suggest that
the non-European international societies were self-contained and stagnant, unreceptive to change.16 Others conclude that the East Asian
tributary system and the Islamic world did not even constitute international societies. They claim that the non-European regional orders lacked
norms and principles to regulate behavior between their constitutive
polities. International society originated in Europe and was then transposed globally.17 Yet others incorrectly argue that these polities were
unwilling and unable to adjust to the Westphalian state system, since
they were premised on universalist legitimations of their rule.
This book challenges those claims. First, all systems are inevitably
also social systems. As the discussions of the East Asian tributary system, the Islamic empires, and the Southeast Asian kingdoms will show
in Chapters 4–9, international societies were hardly the sole prerogative
of Christian Europe. Such a view results from myopic perceptions and
misplaced self-importance rather than empirical fact. Shared collective
beliefs regarding the nature of authority, the legitimation of rule, and the
form of the polity created a foundation from which interactions took
place. They defined the parameters of what was considered internal or
external to the polity, as well as who was a member of that interstate
society and who was not.
These principles were not derived from the material distribution of
power alone. No doubt material factors mattered as permissive conditions –
but the ends to which humans organized themselves, the particular legitimation of political authority, and the very notion of where the boundaries
of one’s own political community lay hinged on shared mental frameworks.
These frameworks influenced how polities acted in the face of material
constraints and opportunities. Collective imagination influenced collective
political order.
15
16
17
There is a large body of scholarship that has similarly emphasized the merits of interpretivist and comparative historical scholarship. Bukovansky 2002; Buzan and Little
2000; Cronin 1999; Hall 1999; Nexon 2009; Reus-Smit 1999, 2018; Phillips and
Sharman 2015.
Wallerstein 1974, for example, argues that such universalist empires constituted world
systems with political rule extending over the main area of economic transactions.
I discuss this point more extensively in Chapter 3.
Ironically, this was the view of Hedley Bull, one of the founders of the early English
School. Bull 1977. Martin Wight, by contrast, conceived of the possibility of international societies beyond Europe. Wight 1977. The School went on to pave the way for
scholarship on comparative historical systems and international societies.
Introduction
7
My approach borrows from the Annales School’s study of mentalités
collectives. In Roger Chartiers’s words collective mentalities are:
Schemes or the contents of thought which, even if they are unexpressed in the
style of the individual, are, in fact, the “unthought” and internalized conditionings
that cause a group or society to share, without need to make them explicit,
a system of representations and a system of values.18
As John Ruggie rightly suggests, the term mentalité collective is virtually
untranslatable. I thus interchangeably use the terms “collective beliefs,”
“shared cognitive script,” and “collective imagination,” or what John
Ruggie terms “collective consciousness,” to denote the habits of interpretation and repertoires of action.19 The Annales historians themselves
use various terms, sometimes speaking of collective imagination, civilization, or simply culture.20
Like the Annales scholars I am keenly aware that collective beliefs do
not operate in a vacuum. Instead I aim to show how the mental, the
imaginary, and the material are inevitably interconnected.
Examining such other international societies and their collective belief
systems demonstrates that shifts in the relative distribution of power
provide the context in which international relations unfold, but they are
not determinate. Interstate orders can emerge even in the absence of
a dominant hegemon or a consortium of cooperating Great Powers.
Closer historical inspection also dispels the claims that these universal
empires were self-contained. Far-flung trade networks traversed the
Eurasian space. Similarly, a global historical approach demonstrates
how the various regions were mutually influenced by political ideas,
cultural motifs, and organizational practices.21 Frontiers proved to be
zones of encounter rather than rigid barriers.
This book also challenges the claim that the polities in East and
Southeast Asia and the Islamic empires that made universalist claims to
rule were incompatible with the Westphalian system. From a doctrinal
perspective the two distinct claims to authority appear to be diametrically
opposed: Westphalian principles declare that territorial borders delimit
the extent of the polity and the legitimate claims of its ruler, whereas
universalist claims recognize in principle no territorial limits to their
authority.22
18
20
21
22
As cited in Gismondi 1985, 213. 19 Ruggie 1993, 157.
Duby 1980; Le Goff 1980, 1988.
For detailed accounts in the historical literature, see Curtin 1984; Tracy 1990, 1991. See
also Spruyt 2017, 82–101.
Recent claims to restore the caliphate in the Middle East give this question added
salience. Can communal identities that are transterritorial in nature be reconciled with
a sovereign territorial system? While movements such as the Islamic State in Iraq and
8
Introduction
However, historical and contextual reflection shows that the
Westphalian system and universalist concepts of rule were not incompatible. Modes of legitimation and conduct in practice must be distinguished
from each other. Legitimating one’s rule as “world conqueror” in theory
necessarily implicated the inclusion of multiple religions and peoples in
one’s domain in practice. To be a universal empire required rulers to be
inclusive and accommodating. To rule “all under heaven,” as the Chinese
emperor proclaimed, meant that other communities somehow had to be
incorporated into the existing polity. Universal empires had to be many
things to many people. Legitimation had to be multivocal.23
This flexibility of universal empires also translated to their ability to
adapt to changing circumstances. While at face value these universal
empires would seem logically incompatible with the notion of sovereign,
territorial states, in practice many found ways to accommodate the incipient Westphalian system. While extolling supremacy above all others on
doctrinal grounds, universal emperors found ways to recognize the rulers
of other polities as peers – as the rulers of the Mughal, Safavid and
Ottoman rulers did with each other, and as the Ottomans gradually
extended to Christian monarchs. Similarly, while founding their claims
to rule on world suzerainty, with others rhetorically conceived as inferiors
or vassals, in practice they had to recognize material limits to their powers.
In time, they even accepted Western rules of diplomatic protocol and
exchange. Indeed, their exclusion from the Western system had as much,
or more, to do with the European disregard for non-Western societies as it
had to do with a lack of innovation or willingness to adapt. Conveniently,
such disregard for the “uncivilized” and “despotic” regimes paved the
way for European empire. While European powers created a “civilized”
core consisting of sovereign – and increasingly national – states, denying
such status to the non-European world served to legitimate imperial
practices toward the “uncivilized.”
The classification and creation of the non-European “Other” thus served
to bring the Westphalian project to its full articulation within Europe itself.
The transformation of the European collective belief system from late
feudal to modern, replete with its material manifestation of recomposing
subjects to citizens, the making of citizens into Frenchmen, Germans, and
23
Syria (ISIS, or the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, ISIL) have captured recent
attention, the question of whether translocal communities of believers, such as the
Muslim ummah, could be reconciled with a system of sovereign states is not new. See,
for example, Piscatori 1986; Parvin and Sommer 1980, 1–21. I turn to this issue at length
in Chapters 6 and 7.
On multivocality, see Nexon 2009, 99–110. As he notes, others have used the term
“polyvalent signaling.”
Introduction
9
so on, was made possible by differentiation with non-European civilizations. The nation-state could be imagined by a process of contradistinction.
Inchoate hybrid forms of authority were swept away in the tide of the
modern nation-state. Early modern political forms that still lingered in
nineteenth-century Europe – remnants of feudalism, local prerogatives,
and identities – were now associated with the world outside the West,
thereby legitimating as well the final extinction of these forms in Europe
itself.
Rather than simply constituting a one-directional encounter of a welldefined and already fully articulated Westphalian state system with nonWestphalian polities, the encounter was bidirectional. The Western
polities (the Euro-American states) came to define themselves, their
identities as nation-states, and the Westphalian system because of, and
through, the encounter.
1.3
The Argument to Come
In Part I of this book I clarify some of the scholarship that has influenced
my work. Chapter 2 discusses how sociological and historical scholarship
provides a more satisfactory approach than positivist epistemology and
methodology. For now, suffice it to say that my critique of positivism
does not foreclose making causal claims or empirical analysis. However,
historical-interpretivist analysis confronts methodological and epistemological challenges of its own. Consequently, I devote Chapter 3 to clarifying
my particular approach to history and the study of international relations.
This book focuses on three distinct international societies that existed
coterminously with the emerging Westphalian system in Europe. Part II,
Chapter 4 of this book discusses the logic of order of the Chinese tributary
system. Undoubtedly, the Chinese Empire was materially more powerful
than its neighbors, Korea and Vietnam, and to a lesser extent, Japan.
However, as David Kang demonstrates, interstate war was a rarity during
the Ming and Qing dynasties.24 A shared set of collective beliefs, revolving around Confucian principles, and others, played an integral role in
this political system. The Chinese imperial system shared norms and
principles of interaction with its tributary states; among which the ritual
deference to the emperor played an important part.
Chapter 5 discusses and challenges the claims that the Chinese tributary system could not adjust to the Westphalian system.25 While the
24
25
Kang 2010a.
Throughout this book, I will use the term “Western” or the “West” as shorthand to
denote the European colonial powers but also the United States and other polities that
were considered part of the European cultural heritage.
10
Introduction
Japanese adoption of Western practices with the Meiji Restoration has
been well recognized, some scholarship argues that the Chinese Empire
failed to engage in innovation, and that the universalist perspective made
it impossible to switch cognitive frames. Thus, the Qing dynasty could
not reconcile itself with a sovereign territorial system. I will take issue with
those views.
I then turn in Part III to discuss three powerful empires that shared an
Islamic heritage. The Islamic world evinced political fragmentation
from its inception. By the early modern era, three empires – the
Ottoman, the Safavid, and Mughal – controlled a vast area from
Hungary to South Asia. Mindful of fallacious assertions of the Islamic
polities as part of a singular unified entity, I nevertheless suggest that
these empires were part of an integrated social space. Shared religious
principles intertwined with other foundational beliefs, which harkened
back to the Turkic-Mongol tradition of the Islamic empires and provided cultural unity. Chapter 6 thus clarifies how the Islamic world
constituted an international society despite the absence of a clear hegemonic power.
The next chapter discusses how the universalist claims of the Islamic
rulers, specifically the Ottomans by the nineteenth century, were deemed
incompatible with the West. A common narrative suggests that only
imposition by the European powers forced the Ottomans to gradually
alter their system and adapt to Westphalian principles. As with the
Chinese Empire, the European powers demanded adjustment to their
standards of civilization, only admitting the Ottoman Empire to the
Concert System in 1856, and only as a lesser partner.
I argue in Chapter 7 that the Ottoman Empire underwent major
transformations well before the European pressures of the nineteenth
century. Contrary to their universalist claims, Ottoman rulers reconciled
themselves with key elements of the Westphalian system. And indeed,
somewhat similar to Japan, the Ottomans thought that they could appropriate Western imperial discourse to serve their own imperial projects in
Northeast Africa. Nevertheless, the European powers denied them legal
equality, even after 1856, as part of a process of creating a distinctive
“Other” in opposition to European self-identity.
The Southeast Asian “galactic empires” provide an even greater contrast to Western conceptions of political order, as I show in Part IV. This
region was never dominated by any single polity. Moreover, unlike the
Islamic world, this region was not united by any monotheistic religion
(although Islam would start to make some inroads by the late fifteenth
century). Nevertheless, collective beliefs and visions created a shared
political and social order, as Chapter 8 demonstrates. These determined
Introduction
11
how authority legitimated itself, and how political relations were to be
conducted within and beyond one’s own political community.
Chapter 9 then turns to how the Southeast Asian polities dealt with the
encroaching European colonial powers. While virtually all of these polities fell to colonialism, Siam (Thailand) managed to retain its independence while undergoing major reforms. The reforms, however, were
interpreted through long-held beliefs that civilizational centers provided
the nexus that held the social and political world together.
Chapter 10 concludes that examining non-Western international societies sheds light on the modernist understanding of interpolity relations,
and requires us to reflect on how our collective imagination influences
contemporary politics.
This book thus offers a set of diverse perspectives on the ontology of
international societies. The collective beliefs that informed these societies
created the foundation of political order and structured relations within
and between polities. As John Ruggie suggests, “The process whereby
a society first comes to imagine itself, to conceive of appropriate orders of
rule and exchange, to symbolize identities, and to propagate norms and
doctrines, is neither materially determined, as vulgar Marxists used to
claim, nor simply a matter of instrumental rationality, as the irrepressible
utilitarians would have it.”26
Contrary to views that these non-Westphalian polities could not adjust
to material and conceptual changes, fundamental transformations
occurred throughout. The Qing dynasty established a foreign ministry
to replace the Board of Rites. The Ottomans established permanent
embassies and insisted on mutually recognized borders. Siam engaged
in modern mapping and classification, as the nation-states of Europe had
done. The alleged lack of innovation, and the assertion that these international societies were incompatible with the West, finds its roots in the
self-definition of Europeans vis-à-vis an allegedly inferior “Other.” This
in turn served to justify European colonial ambitions.
Yet the expansion of the Westphalian state system was neither total nor
unidirectional. Local inflections that originated from long-held collective
imaginations influenced the reception of foreign ideas. Acceptance and
adjustment occurred but not entirely on the terms of the colonizers.
Adjustment did not entail passivity.
The encounter between the universalist empires and the Western
polities introduced new perspectives of inclusion and exclusion and
influenced both parties. Europeans used the encounter to develop standards of normality, both internally and in opposition to non-European
26
Ruggie 1993, 157.
12
Introduction
societies.27 The “normal” corresponded with categorization and classification of individuals and groups, the mapping of territory, and the
mobilization of society in service of the imagined nation. The creation of
an external “abnormal,” that is, the creation of an uncivilized “Other,”
facilitated this process, replete with the jingoist narrative advanced
through European domination. In the universalist empires, previously
flexible criteria of inclusion and exclusion were replaced by new standards of territorial demarcation and the imagined national community.
In sum, this book aims to show how international societies existed
beyond Westphalia. To comprehend the nature of non-Westphalian systems and to provide a novel perspective on the nature of international
order requires an interdisciplinary approach and attention to Global
Historical Studies.
Of course I do not suggest that a return to such early modern belief
systems would be possible or desirable. But the fact that such polities
appear so alien to our modern, established outlook underscores the error
of envisioning our own socially created world as the inevitable and natural
order of things. The fact that the European state system has become
a global system aligns with the Enlightenment view of linear progress
and the notion of teleological evolution – the idea that the current system
is superior to what preceded it. However, in many ways, the very multivocality of these empires allowed for more accommodation and heterogeneity than the homogeneity that was eventually demanded by the
nation-state.28
The process of normalization and normation continues to this day. One
consequence for practical policy has been the desire to engage in state
building and institutional design in other polities, the desire to reproduce
“us” in “them.” As Susanne Rudolph noted, we have often made “modelsof” into “models-for.”29 The Westphalian model of international relations
can thus be seen as universal. The Western states are viewed as the desired
end-point for others to emulate. The nonconforming or different are
relegated to fragile or failing statehood, measured by the standards of the
Western normal. Alternative views of political order and different conceptions of international society remain outside our purview. Perhaps, in
addition to raising other thoughts and inquiries, this book might serve to
question the wisdom of that mind-set.
27
28
I adopt the concepts of normalization and normation from Foucault. See Foucault 2009.
See Reus-Smit 2018. 29 Rudolph 2005, 8.
Part I
Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
2
The Historical–Sociological Approach
to Understanding Order in International
Systems
What we may learn by studying other cultures are not merely possibilities of different ways of doing things, other techniques. More importantly we may learn different possibilities of making sense of human life,
different ideas about the possible importance that the carrying out of
certain activities may take on for a man, trying to contemplate the sense
of his life as a whole.
Peter Winch
It is our hypothesis that European international society historically
depended on a deeper consensus. Order among European states was
generated by agreement on not only international values, but also
domestic values of a social and cultural nature . . . It is the cultural
logic of “us and them,” of collective identity, of group consciousness.
It therefore requires for its analysis a recognition of the relevance of other
disciplines, such as psychology and sociology.
Iver Neumann and Jennifer Welsh
2.1
Introduction
We stand at the end of the American Century. At the advent of World
War I, multiple powers still vied for military and economic supremacy.
Five or six powers could claim major power status on the European
continent. Across the Atlantic, the United States already constituted the
dominant economic entity, even if it remained a military dwarf.1 In Asia,
Japan had transformed itself from feudalistic semi-isolation to a major
modern power, forebodingly signaled by its military successes against
China (1895) and Russia (1905).
By the middle of the twentieth century, however, the world had been
reduced to two superpowers. The United States alone accounted for 40 to
45 percent of world gross national product at the end of World War II.
For the next fifty years, the United States and the USSR divided the world
into capitalist and communist camps, reminiscent of the Spanish and
1
Kennedy 1984, 7–40; 1987.
15
16
Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
Portuguese global division by the Treaty of Tordesillas five centuries
earlier. Despite ideological differences, as well as wars by proxy and
conflicts among allies and associated states, major power war was
averted – so much so that some scholars labeled the period the “Long
Peace.”2 With the collapse of the USSR, the era of bipolarity came to an
end, leaving the United States as the sole economic and military
superpower.
Today dawns another epochal change. China’s ascendance in the
past decades not only marks a change in the relative distribution of
power but arguably heralds a shift in the configuration of the global
system more broadly. Prior to the Columbian era, Europe trailed
behind other polities across the Eurasian space for most of its history.
In the Middle East and Asia, polities were more advanced in terms of
economic development, military capability, technological innovation,
and, arguably, cultural refinement.3 Only in the last half millennium
did European powers make their presence felt across all corners of the
globe, eventually leading to European domination by informal and
formal colonial systems. Even as their empires withdrew, they imposed
their political organization, most notably the international state system,
on all others. This gravitation of politics toward Europe and the “West”
might now recede.
If bipolarity and US dominance since the end of the Cold War contributed to the “Long Peace,” and if such peace was derived from shared
understandings of hegemonic leadership in the respective superpowers’
spheres of influence, the Westphalian state system, and other specific
rules that ordered international relations, then we must inevitably reflect
on what the future might hold if such principles are challenged. To
answer whether the current international order will endure, we must
turn to the foundations of order itself. How might we explain order in
the international system?
Many accounts of order focus on material factors. From this perspective, shifts in the relative distribution of power correlate with hegemonic
wars. In a similar vein, other Realist explanations emphasize the number
of great powers in the given system, suggesting that bipolar worlds are
more stable than multipolar ones. Conversely, rival perspectives view
multipolar systems as more desirable.
Implicitly, such theories make certain assumptions. They assume that
the types of actors in international politics are primarily states, entities
2
3
Gaddis 1986, 99–142.
Hodgson 1963, 227–50. Pomeranz discusses the Chinese level of economic development
in Pomeranz 2000. Sharman shows that, militarily, the European advantage was small and
only emerged toward the nineteenth century. Sharman 2019.
The Historical–Sociological Approach to Understanding Order
17
that wield the monopoly of force and that are territorially defined. They
assume that power is primarily determined by material factors: the size of
armed forces, the state’s economic strength, and the size of its population.
These assumptions obscure more fundamental questions. What is
order in the first place? What are the sources of power and legitimate
authority? Are material conditions the most important, or do other
sources matter as much or more?
To address these questions, I engage in a comparative study of international orders. How does our current order compare to other historical
systems beyond Europe? What were the bases of order, the shared rules
and norms that made sustained patterns of interaction possible, whether
peaceful or conflictual?
My work thus connects to a growing body of literature that has started
to investigate the nature of the Chinese tributary system and particularly
the cultural basis of Chinese hegemony within that system.4 In that spirit
as well, scholars have turned to examining the ways in which the polities in
the Islamic world interacted with one another and the West.5
Reflecting on non-European systems also sheds light on the interactions between Europe and other international systems that did not consist
of sovereign, territorial polities. The conventional view largely holds that
the Westphalian system expanded unilaterally, primarily by forceful colonization of polities that were unwilling to adjust.6 But that view needs
correction.
The ensuing narrative might appear alien to us as modern, Western
readers. International relations scholarship, particularly those approaches
that eschew interpretivist methods, will look quizzically at societies that
based their political and social orders on esoteric beliefs about the nature
of the universe and the role of spirits and divinities. One might conclude
that these early modern, non-European societies got it all wrong. That is
not how the world “really” is. Their understanding of the natural world
was incorrect, revealed, for example, by the poor grasp of geography in
4
5
6
Fairbank was one of the first scholars to bring the Chinese tributary system to the attention
of Western scholarship. Fairbank 1942, 129–49. Fairbank and Chên 1968; Fairbank and
Têng 1941, 135–246. More recently, David Kang has reexamined the Chinese tributary
system from a social science perspective and highlighted the cultural basis of the lack of
conflict among the states in this system. Kang 2010a; 2010b, 591–622. As Chapters 4 and
5 show, the literature on the East Asian tributary system is vast, and growing.
Here, too, the literature is too vast to mention. For recent examples, see Cemil Aydin’s
critique of essentialist views of a unified “Muslim world.” Aydin 2017. Others have
focused on the asymmetric treaties imposed by the West; see, for example, Kayaoǧlu
2010. Radical Islam has generated a vast library of its own. For a recent example, see
Owen 2015.
Hedley Bull argued that international society originated solely in Europe and then
expanded through European dominance to the rest of the world. Bull 1977, 20–21.
18
Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
the maps of the Chinese emperors. Similarly, their understanding of the
political and social world was flawed and failed to recognize how the
political order should be efficiently and effectively designed to achieve
human objectives.
But that conclusion is itself noteworthy. It draws the inference that as
we gain greater insight into the physical world around us, our understanding of the social and political world is similarly more accurate than
understandings of early modern societies. Studying these societies thus
reveals our own conceptual biases for how the scientific approach, particularly the positivist, empiricist one, is expected to yield ever more accurate representations of reality.
Beyond studying the bases of order in several non-European systems,
all of which constituted international societies, my attention also goes to
a second line of inquiry. How did relations between European polities and
non-Westphalian entities evolve?
One type of account has explained the dynamic largely as a unidirectional
process resulting from European supremacy. Triumphalist narratives have
presented multiple reasons for how the Western powers came to dominate
the world by the end of the nineteenth century and for most of the twentieth. Multiple teleological accounts that extol the virtues of the West have
been offered with some plausibility, given that the European powers colonized virtually every part of the globe.7 These accounts tend to stress a lack
of innovation and receptivity to new ideas and technologies among the nonEuropean polities.
My approach differs in asking whether these different international
societies were indeed unwilling and unable to adjust with the European
state system, as is sometimes averred. It has been argued that these
universal empires could not reconcile themselves with the territorial
state system and the principles of the Westphalian order. Contrary to
that view, I will demonstrate in the ensuing chapters that many of the nonWestern polities made considerable adjustments to external pressures.
Indeed, the argument that they were logically incompatible was instead
greatly influenced by the preconceptions and desires of the European
powers and the United States to classify them as being outside of civilized
international society, thus making them into objects for Western
imperialism.
In this chapter, I start with a discussion of how international relations
scholarship and policy makers typically view international order, and then
I clarify the weaknesses and empirical fallacies of positivist and ahistorical
7
In methodological terms, since there is no variation in the observed outcome, multiple
plausible explanations might thus be offered without eliminating any of them.
The Historical–Sociological Approach to Understanding Order
19
accounts. Far from being arcane theoretical positions, such views on the
bases of order influence policy prescriptions.
I argue that a historical study of different types of systems, that emphasizes the importance of collective beliefs, not only provides a means to
examine different patterns of international order but also serves as
a mirror for our own preconceptions of the international system today.
2.2
Order Based on the Distribution of Power: Realist
and Neoliberal Views
American scholarship in particular has searched for the sources of regional and international order in the particular distribution of relative power
among the major states. Stressing the distinction between hierarchical
and nonhierarchical organization, both Classical Realists and Structural
Realists suggest that hierarchical organization leads to stability. In contrast, anarchy, formally defined as the absence of hierarchy, correlates
with self-help, instability, and disorder.8 Hans Morgenthau thus thought
that world government was required to reduce the vices of anarchy and to
provide the same stability as the nation-state provides to its citizens.
Similarly, Kenneth Waltz associated the domestic realm with hierarchy
and stability and the international realm with anarchy and conflict.9
For Realists, order exists when the international system is stable with
a low likelihood of war. Order in turn derives from two structural conditions: anarchy and the particular distribution of power.10 As Kenneth
Waltz famously noted, in the absence of hierarchy, only the distribution of
power affects the structure of the system. The number of relevant actors
in the system thus follows from the specific distribution of power.11
Neoliberals tend to view order as the result of deliberate actions.
Integrating a sociological perspective, neoliberals argue that when states
agree on rules of conduct (specific norms and principles), sustained
peaceful interaction becomes possible. John Ikenberry articulates this
view succinctly:
8
9
10
Hierarchy can appear in several forms. An imperial system constitutes the purest example
of a hierarchy. In such a system, the dominant power controls the internal and external
politics of other entities. At a less intrusive level of control, hegemonic powers control the
external politics of other states, but they do so without imposing formal means of internal
control. For clarification of the variations of hierarchy, see Lake 1996, 1–34; 1999; Doyle
1986.
Waltz 1979, 88; Morgenthau 1978, 492. For a discussion of Morgenthau and the World
State, see Speer 1968, 207–27.
Gilpin 1981, 14–15. Waltz 1979, chapter 5. 11 Waltz 1979, 170–76.
20
Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
The focus is on the explicit principles, rules, and institutions that define the core
relationships between the states that are party to the order. This limits the concept
of order to settled arrangements between states that define their relationship to
each other and mutual expectations about their ongoing interaction.12
Despite considerable variation within both the Realist and Neoliberal
paradigms, both suggest that order depends heavily on the particular distribution of power in a given system. Neoliberal conceptions of order, such as
Ikenberry’s, acknowledge the importance of institutions and self-restraint
but emphasize the material foundations of international order as well. As
Ikenberry argues, if the hegemon wants to create a system that might outlast
its own material position, it should create a constitutional order that is based
on principles that are widely shared. Hence, such an order will continue even
if the hegemon’s preeminence declines. By limiting its power when it is
dominant, it lowers its enforcement costs, and it can create a system such
that “an institutionalized order might lock in favorable arrangements that
continue beyond the zenith of its power.”13 Constitutional orders thus
correlate with a particular distribution of power.14
Ikenberry retreats from the sociological angle of Neoliberalism when he
argues that international order need not be based on normative agreement or accords among states. Order can emerge spontaneously. Or order
might derive from a balance of power, the convergence of interests, or
hegemonic coercion. He adds, “This conception of order is similar to
what Robert Gilpin calls ‘systemic’ order and change.”15
But if there is general consensus on the source of order, there is considerable divergence on the optimal distribution of power. Kenneth Waltz
claimed that bipolar systems were intrinsically more stable. Others, as
Henry Kissinger, have favored multipolar systems with five or six powers;
with greater flexibility in the creation of alliances, such systems can more
readily address changes in the ambitions and power of the major states.16
John Mearsheimer is not alone in arguing that transformations of the
distribution of power are particularly dangerous.17 As Robert Gilpin
12
13
14
15
16
17
Ikenberry 2001, 23. This view is similar to that of the international regimes literature.
See, e.g., Krasner 1983.
Ikenberry 2001, 54.
Ikenberry 2001, 24. Even Robert Keohane’s argument that hegemonic leadership is
neither necessary nor sufficient acknowledges that US hegemony was important in the
formation of the international trade and monetary regimes post–World War II. Keohane
1984.
Ikenberry 2001, 23.
Kissinger thus extrapolated from his academic work on the Congress of Vienna to favor
an international system that tried to mitigate the bipolar nature of the Cold War.
Kissinger 1957/2013.
Mearsheimer 2014.
The Historical–Sociological Approach to Understanding Order
21
notes, “the principal mechanism of change throughout history has been
war, or what we shall call hegemonic war (i.e., a war that determines
which state or states will be dominant and will govern the system).”18
Since time immemorial, hegemonic wars have been sparked by contests
between the declining leading power and the rising challenger.19 If the
current hegemon retains its position, the system continues as it was. If the
challenger emerges victorious, the new hegemon will redesign the system
to fit with its preferences.
Long cycle theory concurs with Gilpin’s main argument. Utilizing both
qualitative and quantitative measures of major power conflicts, it predicts
that wars erupt at the moment the rising state surpasses the dominant
state. Conflict may erupt even earlier, when the growth rate of the dominant power stalls or starts to decline in relative terms vis-à-vis the potential challenger. Rather than wait for the challenger to pose a real threat,
the hegemon will seek to forestall its ascendance.20
Economic perspectives, such as Hegemonic Stability Theory, offer
little solace. Since the benefits of a given international regime flow collectively to all participants while the hegemon bears the costs of provision
and enforcement, participants have an incentive to free ride.21 The international system will falter if the hegemon cannot lead due to its diminishing position or if it declines to take on leadership for political reasons.
Charles Kindleberger’s account of the importance of hegemonic leadership is unparalleled and succinct. He famously accounted for the economic crisis of the 1930s by noting that neither great power led the system
because “in 1929 Britain couldn’t and the United States wouldn’t.”22
The current debates on how to address the shifting balances of power
show how theoretical positions lead to policy recommendations. Realists
and Liberals each have their preferred policies for how the United States
might approach changes in the international system.
Even within a shared paradigmatic perspective, policy recommendations vary – which already suggests that such arguments hinge on the
interpretation of the given observer. Some Realists propose that the
18
19
20
21
22
Gilpin 1981, 15.
Copeland uses similar theoretical arguments to explain World Wars I and II. Copeland
2000.
Modelski 1978, 214–35; Thompson 1990, 201–34. The literature on the topic is vast and
is comprehensively discussed in Goldstein 1988.
The classic statement of the problem is by Olson; see Olson 1965. For Hegemonic
Stability Theory, see Kindleberger 1973. David Lake suggests that small numbers of
leading states might similarly provide for regime maintenance. Lake 1984, 143–70.
Robert Keohane offers another perspective – he argues that hegemonic leadership is
neither necessary nor sufficient for regime emergence or maintenance. Keohane 1984.
Kindleberger 1973, 292.
22
Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
United States should seek to maintain its preeminence given the world’s
need for hegemonic leadership. Maintaining a strong hegemonic position
will forestall and dissuade would-be contenders.23 Other Realists argue
that seeking to maintain the system’s unipolarity is a fool’s errand. Any
dominant power, regardless of its intentions, will precipitate counterbalancing to neutralize any hegemonic aspirations.24 The declining
great power should thus acquiesce in a stable balance between the
major powers rather than pursue clear-cut preeminence.
But even if one could concur on either the pursuit of preeminence or
balancing, how should such preeminence or balancing be pursued? If
a state in decline seeks to maintain its preeminence, how does it arrest
the sources that have led to its diminishing position? If one pursues
balancing, should one rely on one’s own capabilities or seek allies?
Keeping in mind that the cost of maintaining one’s military strength
might result in overstretch and precipitate decline, as Paul Kennedy
argued, one might prefer external balancing by means of alliances, or
even collective security.25
Neoliberals depart from Realist calculations in an even more fundamental manner.26 Pursuing security by military means will precipitate
a security dilemma and bring about the very situation that Realists seek to
avoid. Hegemonic policies and counterbalancing strategies will create
incentives for other actors to offset such policies by a military buildup of
their own. Engagement, fostering economic interdependence, and deepening network ties will instead create incentives among the participants
to maintain stability and renounce military means to obtain their goals.27
Regardless of which theory one favors, the conclusion one reaches is
a sobering one: shifts in relative power will lead to instability and possibly
major power conflict. Looking at past European history, where such shifts
in power correlated with major conflicts, leads one to look at the future
with trepidation.
In sum, many Realist and Liberal theories share a materialist view of
international order in which the distribution of power becomes virtually
the only relevant feature of the international system. This presents
a restrictive view of the foundations that make collective behavior and
23
24
26
27
On US attempts to retain preeminence, see Sarotte 2010, 110–37.
On the ephemeral nature of unipolarity, see Layne 1993, 5–51. 25 Kennedy 1987.
There is no clear-cut consensus on the effects of trade on conflict, partially since the
nature of interdependence might have variant effects. See, e.g., Levy 2003, 127–47;
Barbieri 2002; Gartzke et al. 2001, 391–438.
For a classic argument that interdependence decreases security dilemmas, see Keohane
and Nye 1977.
The Historical–Sociological Approach to Understanding Order
23
international society possible, stemming partially from positivist and
empiricist orientations in the social sciences.
No doubt material changes matter. As I noted earlier, shifts in relative
power create permissive conditions in which states can seek to change existing arrangements. But simply examining material changes leaves us unable
to explain why, for example, the decline of the United States and the rise of
China creates concerns for a major war, while the decline of Great Britain
and the rise of the United States instead led to cooperation and alliance.
2.3
The Sirens’ Lure of Positivism and Empiricism
Structural Realist views and many Neoliberal theories have one critical
element in common: they share the view that politics can be understood
by generally applicable categories and concepts.28 Robert Keohane thus
critiqued the lack of scientific approach in the English School’s study of
international societies in discussing the work of Martin Wight, one of the
founders of that school. “Wight’s greatest oversight, which Bull also
mentions, is his neglect of the scientific or behavioral search for laws of
action (or contingent generalizations) about world politics.”29 From that
perspective we can readily apply particular concepts – such as anarchy,
hierarchy, hegemony – across history, and across distinct political forms,
without critical reflection on whether these concepts mean the same thing
and precipitate similar reactions. We can thus readily observe and interpret actions by others within our existing vocabulary and theories without
knowing and examining the intentions of the actors concerned.30
Structural Realism in particular denies the historically contingent nature of its concepts and theories. Scholarship in international relations,
however, is not unique. Political science more broadly has been profoundly influenced by positivist temptations. Many scholars of international relations remain enchanted by the positivist promise to put the
study of politics on a scientific basis. This enchantment remains despite
a vast body of scholarship that has pointed to its flaws.31
28
29
30
31
Tim Dunne similarly argues that a positivist epistemology has influenced much of
American International Relations theory, particularly in Neorealism and
Neoliberalism. Dunne 1998, 15–16, 62, 187.
Keohane 1992, 1113. Keohane labels Realist and Neoliberal approaches as rationalist, as
distinct from reflexivist styles.
For a recent example, see Charles Butcher and Ryan Griffiths, who propose a definition
of the state “that is culturally neutral and that has existed across time and space.” Butcher
and Griffiths 2017, 109.
Thomas Kuhn advanced the idea that scientific practices were subject to social influences, such as one’s paradigmatic views. Kuhn 1990. For a radical critique that challenges the allegedly objective foundation of scientific approaches, see Feyerabend 1975.
Within political science, criticism of positivist approaches has come from Constructivism
24
Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
The positivist approach in the social sciences finds its roots in the
Logical Positivist School that emerged in the interwar years at the
University of Vienna and thus came to be known as the “Vienna
Circle.” At its extreme, the positivist approach advocated that all statements should have an empirical referent. As the positivist Alfred Ayer
remarked regarding the Vienna Circle, “it became prescriptive with the
suggestion that only statements of these two kinds [empirically informative or a priori] should be regarded as either true or false, and that only
statements which were capable of being either true or false should be
regarded as meaningful.”32
More broadly, Logical Positivism, and its later variations, aimed to
unify the natural and social sciences. The classical statement by Carl
Hempel that explanations should proceed from law-like statements epitomizes the desire to develop general theories from empirical observables.
Human actions are no different from physical phenomena and thus
behavior should be explainable by nomothetic statements and lend themselves to prediction. Throughout his research Hempel explicitly argues
for a unity of science, and suggests historical studies are no different from
the natural sciences.
General laws have quite analogous functions in history and in the natural
sciences . . . they form an indispensable instrument of historical research, and . . .
constitute the common basis of various procedures which are often considered as
characteristic of the social in contradistinction to the natural sciences. By
a general law, we shall here understand a statement of universal conditional
form which is capable of being confirmed or disconfirmed by suitable empirical
findings.33
That general sentiment was taken up in Karl Popper’s reinterpretation
of positivism in favor of a system of corroboration and falsification. The
Popperian view of the philosophy of science enshrines many of the basic
tenets of the earlier positivists, even though it deviates from the principle
that all statements have to be verified. Theories can exist with many of
their elements still open to verification, but theories can nevertheless be
considered scientific if they are in principle falsifiable. Theoretical statements must thus be subjected to crucial experiments.34 Theories that
32
33
34
as well as from poststructuralism and postmodernism. See, e.g., Wendt 1999, 39; Ashley
1986, 255–300.
See Alfred Ayer for a discussion of the principle that statements are meaningless if
empirical verification is not possible. Ayer 1958, 15.
Hempel 1942, 35. For a discussion, see Skinner 1985, 4.
Popper 1979. For a defense of Popper’s position by reading him as a sophisticated
falsificationist, see Lakatos 1978. Robert Keohane evaluates Realism using Lakatos’s
criteria in Keohane 1983, 503–40.
The Historical–Sociological Approach to Understanding Order
25
proceed by interpretive methods fail to provide such crucial tests, and
should be considered unscientific.
Following this positivist epistemological orientation, a considerable
body of political science has accepted a strict subject-object distinction.
The task for social science is thus conceived as the systematic exploration
of empirical observables and the search for generalizable regularities, as is
exemplified in the natural sciences. Social science theories aim at verisimilitude, correspondence between theory and objective reality. If successful, discovered regularities provide explanation as well as prediction.
This positivist ambition has led to the privileging of material “facts”
over intention and meaning. Empirical “facts” are unproblematic such
that observations of behavior can be understood in similar terms, provided appropriate measurement methods are used and no measurement
error creeps in. Theoretical concepts, in the positivist perspective, can
thus be applied to different eras and regions without any problem.
Observation suffices to understand action. Adopting such a view,
Kenneth Waltz famously opined,
Through all the changes of boundaries, of social, economic, and political form, of
economic and military activity, the substance and style of international politics
remain strikingly constant. We can look farther afield, for example, to the China of
the warring states era . . . and see that where political entities of whatever sort
compete freely, substantive and stylistic characteristics are similar.35
This epistemological and methodological position presents
a monochromatic view of politics and social order. Historical periods,
and other forms of international order are treated as similar “cases.”
Distant epochs and systems add to the typology of systems and provide
additional data to test and develop theory. For positivist scholars, all
polities – whether Greek cities, Chinese warring states, tribal configurations – behave similarly, if placed in a similar structural environment. As
discrete entities under anarchy, all such entities will engage in self-help,
balance against stronger opponents, or bandwagon if they see benefits
from the more powerful ally. War is war, whether fought by Ancient
Greeks, tribes in the Amazon such as the Yanomamö, or the armies of
the United States. We can thus unproblematically assume that the conflict between Athens and Sparta is analogous to the bipolarity of the
Cold War.
Consequently, motives and preferences are translated to fit our conceptual vocabulary. If Thucydides has Greeks fighting for honor, we can
assume that the “real” causal factors behind the conflict must have been
35
Waltz 1986, 329–30.
26
Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
the imbalances of power, the possibility of territorial gains, or the decline
of the hegemonic power and the rise of a challenger.36
The positivist approach to understanding international systems thus
inevitably misconstrues the nature of non-Westphalian systems. It leads
to interpretation of the historical record in adherence to various preconceptions rather than an examination of the social understanding that
informed the behavior of polities. It therefore fails to recognize the multiple sources of international order.
The positivist approach, particularly as evinced by Structural Realism,
dichotomizes order by focusing on two opposites: hierarchy versus anarchy. Hierarchy means the presence of a final authority. Anarchy is the
opposite. Any modalities are conceived as degrees between these two
poles. Less hierarchy means more anarchy. They are mutually exclusive.
Consequently, other types of systems, heterarchical systems, for example,
remain outside positivist purview. Heterarchical systems can combine
hierarchy and anarchy but along different dimensions. Indeed, such
systems might have multiple hierarchies with several actors holding
authority over distinct issue areas.37
Moreover, prominent theories of international politics that adhere to
positivist tenets fail to heed Max Weber’s admonition that action is
subjectively meaningful. Instead, they assign motives to actors simply
by empirical observation, such as deducing motives from a given balance
of power. However, as Weber made clear, simple observation does not
suffice for understanding the actions of others. One needs to know the
meaning that person attaches to his or her action.
A cultural and sociological approach reveals instead the multiple
sources of international order, as well as order that was far more complex
than a simple dichotomy might allow. While rulers made exulted claims
to hierarchical and universal rule, they could simultaneously acknowledge the realities of political fragmentation. Thus, multiple Islamic rulers
could simultaneously make exulted claims to be world conquerors in the
footsteps of the three great world conquerors – Alexander, Chinggis
(Genghis) and Timur. Yet, they could do so without apparent
36
37
Ned Lebow challenges such views and advances a cultural approach to international
relations in which he argues that human motivation varies across time, driven by reason,
appetite (the pursuit of wealth), and spirit (the pursuit of honor and standing). Lebow
2008. Peter Katzenstein in particular has championed the importance of collective
identity and culture, including for the field of security studies where cultural variables
have tended to get short shrift. See, e.g., Katzenstein 1996. Likewise, Eriksen and
Neumann 1993 argue that international relations studies would benefit from using
methods from social anthropology.
White 1995, 101–23.
The Historical–Sociological Approach to Understanding Order
27
contradiction even as they fully recognized that multiple independent
empires occupied the Islamic region.
2.4
An Interpretive Approach to International Orders
I have argued that the strong positivist position is not tenable.38 Many
arguments, including the enterprise of philosophy itself, and thus also
philosophy of science, do not lend themselves to verification, and yet clearly
are not “nonsense.” Furthermore, the idea that natural science and social
science should proceed by similar methods of evaluation does not hold.39
Evaluations of empirical observations do not float freely. They are
made within a specific social context. While we can make relatively simple
empirical observations, such as, state X has Y number of tanks, the
meaning we give to that observation emerges only within a particular
socially constructed matrix. For example, in his friendly amendment to
Realism, Stephen Walt, while emphasizing the continued salience of
balance of power theories, suggests that states consider factors other
than military capability. In his view, states balance against “threats.”40
But this only addresses part of the issue. What, after all, are considered
threats? Why is North Korea with its modest nuclear capabilities considered a threat to the United States, whereas the more substantial nuclear
arsenals of the United Kingdom or France are not? The evaluation of
threat must entail an evaluation of intent, objectives, willingness to
engage in military conflict, and so on before an empirical observation
regarding North Korea’s material arsenal acquires a particular meaning.
Christopher Hemmer and Peter Katzenstein reach the same conclusion
as I do. “Walt moves a large distance from material capabilities to ideational factors. In his analysis, ideology is a variable that competes with
others for explanatory power. Ideology is a system of meaning that entails
the distinction between self and other in the definition of threat.”41
38
39
40
41
Carl Hempel preferred the term “empiricism” over “logical positivism” to avoid confusion with the earlier positivist philosophy of Comte. “Logical positivism,” however, is the
more frequently used term.
On sophisticated falsification, see Lakatos 1978, 31–47.
Walt 1987. Walt concludes that the agendas of revolutionary states made them into
threats for other states. Of course, states that constituted threats to some were welcome
allies to others. For example, the Patriot Party in the Netherlands saw revolutionary
France as a welcome ally that helped bring down the oligarchical Dutch Republic in
1795. Similarly, Randall Schweller suggests one cannot a priori predict how states will
act. Their actions will depend on their particular identity and motives, that is, their
actions will depend on whether they are status quo states or revisionists. Schweller
1994, 72–107.
Hemmer and Katzenstein 2002, 586. See also Bukovansky’s remarks on Walt. “It is also
important to assess the cultural roots of threat perception.” Bukovansky 2002, 219.
28
Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
Mutual perceptions and evaluations of what constitutes “reality” determine how polities engage one another. We suppose that North Korea’s
nuclear weapons pose a particular threat given statements by leaders of
North Korea, its past policies, its relative isolation from the international
community, its human rights record, and so on. Thus, the empirical
observation, “North Korea has a nuclear weapon,” has a different meaning and implication for an American observer than, say, “The United
Kingdom has a nuclear weapon.”
Structural Realists in particular have been guilty of misunderstanding
the concept of power by seeing it as a set of material assets rather than as
a relationship. As Paul Schroeder suggests, “State power in international
politics is not a thing, a definable and measurable entity . . . A state’s
power . . . involves above all a relationship between its international needs
and goals, its capacity to meet them, and the costs of doing so.”42 This
implies that how one evaluates a state’s power derives from the state’s
objectives vis-à-vis others, and how others evaluate the compatibility of
those goals with their own.43
Classical Realists have been far more aware of the social nature of empirical phenomena than their Structural Realist counterparts.44 Hans
Morgenthau, the doyenne of Classical Realism, no sooner proclaimed the
balance of power as a universal phenomenon then he expounded on its
uncertainty and its invocation as an ideology. “This uncertainty of all
power calculations not only makes the balance of power incapable of practical application but leads to its very negation in practice.”45 Even more
tellingly, he noted that what might be taken as a general empirical condition
across time and regions actually, on closer examination hinged on “common
moral standards and common civilization as well as common interests.” It
was made possible because Europe constituted “one great republic” in the
minds of the politicians of the time. The balance of power derived from
a shared social understanding of what constituted a balance, how the balance
should be maintained, and what the balance was supposed to accomplish.46
John Ruggie has succinctly stated the implications of understanding
international order in social terms. He did so by asking a counterfactual.
42
43
44
45
46
Schroeder 1994, 583.
As Tim Dunne notes, the Cold War ended when “the enemy” reinvented itself, leading
the West European states to reexamine their interests. Dunne 1998, 187.
As Michael Fischerkeller notes, “a reliance on objective, quantitative indicators places
a theorist in peril of deducing unfounded behavioral propositions, because subjective,
cultural prejudice can play an equally monumental role in the assessment process.”
Fischerkeller 1998, 3.
Morgenthau 1978, 215.
Morgenthau 1978, 226–27. While Morgenthau does not cite who referred to Europe as
“one great republic,” he likely had Voltaire in mind. Watson 1992, 8.
The Historical–Sociological Approach to Understanding Order
29
Had Germany won World War II, would we be indifferent to a system
dominated by Germany versus by the United States? In the view of
Structural Realists, in either case, the dominant power would create
a hierarchical, and thus stable, international order. However, the type of
policies pursued by the hegemonic states in question would be quite
different. The argument that hegemonic dominance creates stability
posits a mechanical relation between states, but it is devoid of social
purpose.47 Following Structural Realist reasoning, we would fail to recognize that the Nazis’ lack of appeal beyond the supporters of fascism was
a key reason for their failure, and that the Neoliberal objectives pursued
by the United States explain the durability of the postwar order. The
policies that states pursue are thus not simply the result of mechanical
reactions to the distribution of power, but are informed by the broader
social resonance of other actors’ objectives.
In like manner one must question the assumption made by Structural
Realists and many Neoliberals that we can unproblematically derive explanations from the pursuit of self-interest, and that we can assume without
skepticism that we know what constitutes interest in the first place. Interests
are malleable, as Albert Hirschman suggests. Passions were channeled into
interests in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Practices
once considered to exemplify avarice now became the rational pursuit of
self-interest, from which capitalism subsequently emerged.48
Even more tellingly, the very proposition assumes individuals know what
constitutes their self-interest in the first place and then act in the pursuit of
such interests. As Marc Bloch remarked, “Homo oeconomicus was an empty
shadow, not only because he was supposedly preoccupied by self-interest;
the worst illusion consisted in imagining that he could form so clear an idea
of his interests.”49
Finally, to explain human behavior by nomothetic theories suggests
that behaviors that cannot be subsumed under these theories must constitute irrational deviations.50 Alternatively, if we do not wish to see these
behaviors as irrational, we interpret such behaviors to fit our preconceptions. For example, functionalist theories account for observed phenomena by the functions they fulfill, even if these phenomena were not the
intended outcomes.51
To be clear, I do not argue against causal argumentation. Positivism is
not mistaken because it seeks to understand the factors that lead to
47
50
51
Ruggie 1982, 382. 48 Hirschman 1977. 49 Bloch 1953, 194–95.
This is a point made by R. D. Laing regarding positivist theories in psychology. See
Skinner 1985, 9.
For example, a famous functionalist explanation by Marvin Harris suggested that observant Hindus revered cattle because they provided fuel and other material benefits rather
30
Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
particular outcomes. It is mistaken in privileging simple observation at the
expense of interpretation, and mistaken in the belief that only causal
argumentation in the form of nomothetic statements can be rigorous.
I also do not suggest that comparison or understanding of different
polities and regional orders is inherently problematic, or even impossible.
Such a position would not only relegate one to misplaced solipsism but
would also be epistemologically flawed, as I will argue in the next chapter.
I merely advocate a skeptical stance toward theories that claim universalist and atemporal validity without giving attention to the social motivation of the actors involved.
2.5
Collective Imagination and Visions of Order
Many prevalent understandings of regional and international order warrant further scrutiny. By essentializing the state system (in its modern or
premodern varieties), they advance an ontological view of the international system as consisting of discrete and mechanically interacting elements. In such a mechanical universe the distribution of power is
inevitably seen as the key dynamic factor. To paraphrase, many theories
of international relations, particularly structural theories, tend to see
a world of clocks rather than clouds.52
Such theories presume that political communities are clearly demarcated and constitute discrete units operating under anarchy. They further
submit that anarchy has been the key perennial structural condition in the
international system that causes states to kinetically interact as if they
were billiard balls.53 While one might regard this as a methodological
assumption used to generate an abstract theoretical model, the mental
framework it invokes indicates a more fundamental issue. We tend to see
patterns of human interaction in the political and social world as similar to
forces in the natural world.
The world of Newtonian physics, of mass and force, of elements that
attract or repulse, has invaded our collective imagination. In epistemological respects this view has permeated the social sciences, or at least
studies in international relations, such that they have “become almost
52
53
than accepting the actors’ own clarification that the prohibition against killing cattle
emanated from their adherence to ancient Vedic norms. Harris 966, 51–59.
Almond and Genco 1977.
Arnold Wolfers articulated the billiard ball model as one way to study international
relations. Wolfers 1962, 19. While he has been associated with the term, Wolfers’s
position arguably was more nuanced, drawing attention to multiple levels of international
relations beyond the state (24) as well as juxtaposing the politics of necessity with
a politics of choice (chapter 15).
The Historical–Sociological Approach to Understanding Order
31
54
Newtonian in character.” That view itself finds its roots in the marriage
of the Enlightenment with the scientific revolution.
As Adam Watson observed, Europeans in the eighteenth century sometimes spoke of Europe as one republic in which order was maintained by
the balance of power “rather like the planets of Newton’s solar system.”55
Speaking of the balance of power, Herbert Butterfield similarly noted that
“the whole order in Europe was a kind of terrestrial counterpart of the
Newtonian system of astronomy. All the various bodies . . . were poised
against one another, each exercising a kind of gravitational pull on all the
rest.”56 Elites were not beyond invoking the mechanical perspective to
advance their interests. For example, in England, the Anglican Church
found that Newtonian science could advance its preferred social and
political order.57
From that perspective, states that possess equally sized armed
forces are thus said to be in “balance.” This balance of power, as
any mechanical scale, will be in equilibrium as long as the military
power of each state remains the same, exerting a similar force on the
mechanism.58
The image of polities as atomistic units has found material expression
in the current Westphalian system. The Westphalian system enshrines the
principle that the governing authority should be defined territorially, with
borders demarcating the sphere of domestic politics. Within this sphere,
individuals ideally identify themselves as a nation, the imagined community whose identity is linked to the territory in question. Territorial state
and national identify are thus fused, to define the in-group in which
individuals find purpose and mutual obligation. Beyond the borders,
interactions between states occur in the realm of anarchy. Nations in
other states thus constitute the natural and oppositional “Others” or out-
54
55
57
58
Ruggie 1998, 855. Waltz thus refers multiple times to Newton’s approach to argue that
Waltz’s methodology is theoretically superior to other approaches, which he classifies as
reductionist and descriptive. Waltz 1979, 3, 5, 9–10.
Watson 1992, 8. 56 Butterfield 1966, 132.
“The social explanation for the triumph of Newtonianism in the late seventeenth century
stresses what previous commentators have ignored – its usefulness to the intellectual
leaders of the Anglican church as an underpinning for their vision of what they liked to
call the ‘world politick.’ The ordered, providentially guided, mathematically regulated
universe of Newton gave a model for a stable and prosperous polity, ruled by the selfinterest of men.” Jacob 1976, 18.
As Iver Neumann and Jennifer Welsh phrased the issue, “the dominant role of the realist
paradigm in international relations theory has left little room for the study of the role of
cultural variables in world politics . . . The result is the metaphor for the interaction of
states as the mechanical one of the billiard table, with power politics as the primary
dynamic.” Neumann and Welsh 1991, 327.
32
Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
groups. In the Westphalian system inclusion and exclusion are thus
spatially defined.59
Historical reflection suggests that this perceived ontology of the contemporary state system is not a necessary and natural reflection of
a material phenomenon. By assuming that all international relations can
be understood as a set of interacting elements under anarchy, social
creations have been interpreted as if they were brute facts. An interpretive
historical approach challenges such a positivist view.
Once we accept that the clear demarcation of political communities is
a historically contingent outcome of specific processes in Europe, we can
no longer assume that polities across space and time can be readily
described as discrete units under anarchy. The very meaning of anarchy
becomes tenuous. The rigid, territorial distinction of “inside” and “outside” evaporates. We can then also no longer separate the domestic realm
from international politics.60 Consequently, the study of “international”
relations must be subsumed under the study of political order in its
entirety. “Domestic” politics and “international” relations flow into
each other and are mutually determinative. For example, when the
Chinese emperor justified his dynastic authority by the mandate of heaven, this structured relations with his immediate subjects but also with
polities, such as Korea and Vietnam, that lay outside his immediate
domain. Their acknowledgment of the emperor’s status as suzerain reinforced the relative standing between these polities, as well as the emperor’s standing within the Chinese Empire.
To understand the various modes through which communities understood their political order and to understand how these communities
differentiated themselves from others requires a reflective study of the
ontology of different political systems. Extrapolating from the distribution of power without attention to the underlying motives and mutual
understanding of the actors leads to erroneous conclusions.
One must therefore understand order in a sociological sense.
International order inevitably entails international society. An international society consists of the social arrangement of polities that share
a collective imagination and defines what social and political relations
are as well as what they should be. Collective imagination has empirical as
well as normative dimensions. Shared collective beliefs inform the actions
59
60
On the modalities of inclusion and exclusion, see Walker 2010.
Indeed, this distinction of a “domestic” and “international” realm came late to Europe as
well and only emerged with the emergence of the sovereign territorial state. “The idea of
rule being exercised within a precisely defined geographical space, indeed over space as is
the case nowadays, has been alien to western civilization during the greater part of its
history. It only begins to appear in post-Reformation Europe.” Osiander 2007, 5.
The Historical–Sociological Approach to Understanding Order
33
of members in a structural sense. They appear as the natural state of
affairs, which is simultaneously open to local variation and interpretation.
To engage these questions one must look to scholarship beyond political science proper. An interdisciplinary approach using the research in
political science, sociology, anthropology, historical studies and related
fields provides a fruitful avenue of entry and suggests how one might
study the cultural foundations of “international” (for want of a better
word) order. As Quentin Skinner suggests, “if we wish to understand
earlier societies, we need to recover their different mentalités in as broadly
sympathetic a fashion as possible.”61
Such a methodology requires one to surrender the idea that systems are
suspended in time, waiting to be discovered as physical objects as in the
natural sciences.62 Concepts such as “states,” “international,” and “foreign” have specific connotations to us now because we are children of
modernity and the international system that came with it. To assume and
accept that many of our statements and claims about our world are true is
to fail to seek and investigate why we hold these statements to be true.
This becomes startlingly clear as one immerses oneself in the rich tapestry
provided by historical and global studies of non-European polities and
systems. It is through such study that we are lead to consider the possibility of alternative modes of governance, rule, and legitimacy. It is
through such study that we realize the very limits of our own
vocabulary.63 And, finally, such study presents us with the means to
better understand not only the historical non-Westphalian world but
our own modern world as well.
61
62
63
Skinner 1978, xi. With mentalités, Skinner refers to the French Annales historians.
Rorty’s view on nonfoundational theory has heavily influenced my own. Rorty 1979.
I return to this issue in the following chapter.
As the later Wittgenstein argued, our own understanding functions within the specific
language game of which we are part. Wittgenstein 1958.
3
Collective Beliefs and Visions of Order
In place of positivism, the English School argued for an interpretive
understanding of international relations; one which revealed the contingency (and tragedy) of human decision-making, the often irreconcilable meanings that different actors give to the same event, and the way in
which cultural values shape diplomatic and political practice.
Tim Dunne
Most post-eighteenth-century social science has lost the language to
convey, let alone take seriously, the ceremonial and symbolic as anything
but the instrument of the efficient. And you do not have to be a positivist
to have that deficiency. Living as we do in democratic and protestant
American society, in a poverty of stateliness and regal ceremony, we
underestimate the power and reality of these forces. It is a lacuna in our
historical and theoretical imagination.
Susanne Rudolph
3.1
Introduction
Positivist understandings of international politics and regional order can
lead us dramatically astray. Rather than assume that different political
communities are driven by the same motivations, or assume that international order depends on material capabilities alone, we should interrogate how political communities and political order are constituted and
understood by the actors themselves.
My point is not to dispute that individuals can be driven by a desire to
acquire more territory or resources, or that polities are not concerned with
their material survival. Material distributions of power, brute facts in
Searle’s terms, no doubt influence state policies.1 But material factors
constitute background conditions; they say nothing about objectives or
motives, the reasons why individuals or polities act in a particular manner.
The relative decline of Britain and the rise of the United States tell us that
these powers could have engaged in hegemonic war, as occurred in the
1
See Searle 2006. I return more extensively to this point later in this chapter.
34
Collective Beliefs and Visions of Order
35
hegemonic struggles of Britain with the Dutch Republic, or with Portugal
and Spain. That Britain and the United States did not do so, however,
requires an understanding of their respective views on democracy, shared
capitalist economies, similar views on human rights and popular sovereignty, and so on.
If one person kills another person this constitutes a brute fact. We can
verify the event in true or false terms. But whether this constitutes murder, self-defense, or a soldier’s action against an enemy combatant, constitutes a social fact. Similarly, international order is social in nature and is
produced by specific historical circumstances and actions, features that
were well understood by Classical Realists but too often forgotten in
Structural Realist scholarship.
Interpreting and understanding social events thus call for sociological
and historically informed research. Like Iver Neumann, I regard international system and international society as ontologically the same.2 Every
system of interacting conscious actors contains a social component.
This chapter starts with discussing two important challenges to ahistorical, positivist social science and international relations scholarship.
Constructivist theory has convincingly demonstrated how international
systems are also social systems. It has demonstrated as well that ideas and
interests are inextricably linked. Similarly, the English School has championed the need for historical analyses and contextual nuance.
I consequently begin this chapter with discussing my affinity with these
approaches, as well as points of difference.
But critique requires one to lay out an alternative. On which epistemological grounds might we access and understand past events that differ so
much across space and time? Following in particular the insights of John
Searle, Peter Winch, the later Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hans-Georg
Gadamer, and Paul Ricoeur, I develop a hermeneutic approach,
a historical interpretation that is contextual, interpretative, and
empirical.3
After clarifying my interpretivist epistemology I lay out a methodology
by means of which we might study collective beliefs and culture, and
demonstrate their relevance for international relations scholarship. The
insights of Quentin Skinner, Clifford Geertz, and Marshall Sahlins serve
as exemplars of my method of study. To understand how culture manifests itself we must trace how collective belief systems are experienced in
multiple spheres of life.
2
3
Neumann 2011, 466. My view of international society is close to what Andrew Phillips
regards as civilizational assemblages or civilizational complexes. Phillips 2017, 43–62.
For a summary view of the relevance of Wittgenstein, Winch, and other alternatives to
positivist and rationalist approaches, see George and Campbell 1990, 272–80.
36
Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
My approach to culture is similar to how the French Annales School of
historians, influenced by Émile Durkheim, pioneered the study of collective beliefs, “mentalités collectives,” in order to understand social and
political order. As they argued, the European medieval collective imagination revealed itself in architecture, every day practices of work, rituals of
marriage, how people dealt with birth and death, modes of combat, the
administration of justice; and so on.
I extend their insights to show how particular cultures, coherent sets of
collective beliefs and imaginations, influenced political orders beyond
early modern Europe.4 While the Annales historians focused on various
aspects of life at the micro and the macro level, this study will focus more
specifically on the modes by which rulers legitimated their authority and
how individuals understood rule and organization.
As Marc Howard Ross demonstrates, culture influences key areas of
concern for international relations.5 Collective beliefs serve to define
interests as well as how actors should pursue such interests. They also
link the individual to the collective. Which collectivities are relevant for
individuals? Of which collectivities do they consider themselves to be
members? Culture provides at least partial answers to those questions
and thus influences political organization and forms of institutionalization. Critically for international relations, collective identity delimits the
boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, the communal “Self” versus the
alien, and potentially hostile “Other.” Finally, collective beliefs serve to
create common knowledge. They provide the means through which
actors understand their own actions as well as ascribe motives to the
actions of others.
While advancing this particular approach, I am mindful that a criticism
of positivism and materialist explanations suggest to some a surrender to
radical epistemological relativism. Such a relativist reading of history
implies we cannot access the past. To read the past is to inevitably bring
our modernist conceptions to bear. An incommensurable rift separates
our world from that of the past. Taken to its limit one might conclude that
historical worlds are so alien they defy comprehension. Ned Lebow, while
advancing a cultural theory of international relations, thus worried that
“the protocols of the hermeneutic approach would all but cripple social
science. They would restrict comparison to cultures and eras bounded by
shared concepts.”6 I suggest, however, that while hermeneutics advances
4
5
In this sense the research follows the model of a narrative protocol with the goal to
demonstrate a configurative order. In this process, descriptive statements are organized
into a conjectured ordering scheme. The narrative aims to produce an account that is
convincing to others who examine the same set of events. Lake 2011, 475.
Ross 1997, 45–53. 6 Lebow 2008, 40.
Collective Beliefs and Visions of Order
37
a skeptical position it does not lead to solipsism. While we cannot escape
our own contextual knowledge that we bring to bear on past events, the
analysis of the past serves to question our foundational perspectives, as
Gadamer and Ricoeur suggest.
This engagement with the past does not serve as a means to discover an
immutable, objective “reality,” or to generate generalizable “laws of
history.” Instead it serves as a mirror of our contemporary understanding.
Studying international societies beyond the European state system serves
to illuminate the different bases of order, and simultaneously highlights
the distinctiveness of the Westphalian system.
Examining how the Westphalian system interacted with non-European
international societies also clarifies the terms under which that interaction
took place. One prevalent view suggests the Westphalian state system
displaced the existing political orders simply by colonial imposition. NonEuropean polities are depicted as recalcitrant and resistant to change.
That understanding is incorrect. Closer inspection reveals far greater
agency and adjustment on the part of non-European polities, even if the
Westphalian principles were modulated in various forms to conform to
existing logics of order.
Globalization and the territorial state system are now ubiquitous. In
this sense what was “Western” has become at least part of all our identities. As Loubna El Amine notes, “if we reconceptualize the ‘we’ of the
history of political thought as ‘moderns’ rather than ‘Westerners,’ then
the ‘they’ are the premoderns, not the Easterners. It is this ‘they’ that can
then be used to provide us with a frame of reference for understanding
and evaluating our modern condition.”7
Consequently, an engagement with early modern non-Westphalian
international systems encourages us to reflect on how our own collective
beliefs, our mentalité collective, influences and, indeed, creates not only the
international system but the very actors that constitute that system.
Indeed, it calls on us to reflect on who “we” are and how we understand
the world.
3.2
From Constructivism to Cultural Interpretation
Constructivist theory, in advocating for an interpretive approach, provides one alternative to positivist approaches in international relations
theory. Rather than seek generalizable propositions from assumed material interests, Constructivists submit that “ideas” inform “interests.”8
What individuals see as their security interests, or what they view as
7
El Amine 2016, 111.
8
Wendt 1999, 113f.
38
Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
economic benefits and costs, depends on what they believe is in their
interest in the first place. Likewise other scholars have argued that individuals are part of a larger social community and within that community,
ideology, social norms, and practices inform what we see as “interests.”9
The Constructivist research program has generated a vast body of
scholarship.10 Some of this scholarship has focused particularly on clarifying the epistemological and methodological premises behind
Constructivist research. Others have started to explore the implications
for empirical work. It is also the case that some scholars suggest
a complementarity across research agendas, such as an affinity with
Classical Realist scholars, specifically given their focus on perceptions
and misperceptions.11
As John Ruggie notes there are a great array of approaches within
Constructivism itself. Nevertheless, he usefully distinguishes three main
dimensions within this program.12 Neoclassical Constructivists, of which
he is one, focus particularly on discerning intersubjective meanings,
finding commonality in the works of Searle, Habermas, and others.
Postmodern Constructivists are particularly influenced by the work of
Derrida and Foucault, and are skeptical of causal specification. Alexander
Wendt’s writings are an example of Naturalistic Constructivism, grounding itself in scientific realism as its epistemological approach.13
While influenced by all three, this book differs in some respects from
what Ruggie describes as Naturalistic Constructivism. First, I suggest
that some aspects of Constructivism, particularly in the work of Wendt,
remains too state centric. In Wendt’s widely read discussion of international systems, arrangements can vary between Hobbesian, Lockean, and
Kantian configurations.14 A Hobbesian system resembles the structural
anarchy envisioned by Waltz. States fear for their survival and rely on
rational calculations and self-help to maximize their power. In a Lockean
system, states similarly are guided by rational self-interest, but similar to
Neoliberal views, they are able to establish rules and norms that facilitate
9
10
11
12
13
14
As Albert Hirschman describes, socially desirable objectives vary across time and communities. Hirschman 1977. For the influence of collective beliefs on the definition of
interests, also see Blyth 2002.
It is impossible to generate even a summary list of this large corpus. For an overview, see
Finnemore and Sikkink 2001; and Ruggie 1998. For a few examples of constructivist
research, besides Wendt’s work, see Finnemore 2003; Adler and Barnett 1998;
Bukovansky 2002; Hall 1999; Katzenstein 1996; Reus-Smit 1999.
Jervis 1976 remains a locus classicus. See also Mercer 2005.
Ruggie 1998, 881–82.
Ruggie classifies himself, Peter Katzenstein, Friedrich Kratochwil, Emmanuel Adler, and
Martha Finnemore as examples of Neoclassical Constructivism. Richard Ashley, James
Der Derrian, and others he sees as representatives of the Postmodern version.
Wendt 1999, chapter 6. He describes these societies as cultures of anarchy.
Collective Beliefs and Visions of Order
39
cooperation. Kantian anarchy presents the very opposite of Hobbesian
politics. Whereas the latter is guided by enmity, the Kantian system
revolves around amity. States are guided by the principles of mutual
reciprocity and mutual aid. They see themselves as members of a wider
community with shared ideals and objectives. Consequently, as Wendt
famously phrased it, “anarchy is what states make of it.”15 Arguably this
statist orientation can also be found in Christian Reus-Smit’s earlier
work. As he notes, institutions are “elementary rules of practice that states
formulate to solve the coordination and collaboration problems associated with coexistence under anarchy.”16
Wendt and Reus-Smit both convincingly demonstrate that international relations can show considerable variation across historical periods
despite the prevalence of independent and geographically bounded units.
International politics under anarchy are not constant.17
However, because Constructivism originally set out to critique
Structural Realism, it accepted an attenuated conception of the international system. Consequently, Wendt continued with the view that
states are the principal units of analysis for international political
theory.18 His approach was a state-systemic project leading John
Hobson to label the approach “statist constructivism.”19 Likewise ReusSmit’s earlier work started from the Realist premise that the international system consists of discrete elements and that this constitutes a key
feature of international systems. He explicitly resisted any focus on
suzerain and heteronomous units, because he wanted to focus on
a comparison of international societies of states. “We refer to the
moral purpose of the ‘state’ because such rationales are of a different
category to the moral purposes of suzerain or heteronomous forms of
political organization.”20
Conversely, for John Ruggie, the discussion of heteronomy forms an
integral part of how he views the malleability of international systems.21
Reus-Smit’s later work and his discussion of cultural approaches to the
15
17
18
20
21
Wendt 1992, 391–426. 16 Reus-Smit 1999, 14.
Reus-Smit’s view of Constructivism differs, however, from Wendt’s and revolves around
the question of how logics of consequences and logics of appropriateness relate to each
other. For Reus-Smit, some forms of Constructivism, as Wendt’s, have focused excessively on logics of appropriateness, which he views as Structuralism. Reus-Smit 1999,
165–66.
Wendt 1994, 385. 19 Wendt 1999, 7; Hobson 2000, 165.
Reus-Smit 1997, 566. He also notes that “societies of sovereign states, suzerain systems,
and heteronomous systems are all structured by organizing principles.” See also ReusSmit 1999, 31.
Ruggie 1986, 131–57; Ruggie 1993, 139–74.
40
Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
study of international relations, moves away from his earlier stance and
has shifted toward Ruggie’s position.22
By viewing states as the key actors in international politics, and by
assuming that states in all systems operate under anarchy, that is, as
discrete and autonomous spheres of authority, that version of
Constructivism conceded too much to Structural Realism. If we do so,
we remain prisoners of our own vocabulary. To understand other systems
across history and geography, as discrete polities operating under anarchy, presupposes a specific ontological understanding of the system. Yet
it is the very distinction of “inside” (our concept of domestic politics) and
“outside” (the politics in the international realm) that must be
interrogated.23
We might conceive of states as a form of institution that is distinct from
tribes or chiefdoms.24 But this does not imply that we should understand
these polities as discrete actors, as territorially defined sovereign political
organizations as in the Westphalian order. They are not states in the
territorial sovereign sense. The demarcation of who occupies interiority
in the political community and who is exterior cannot be taken for granted
as similar in intent, origin, and implications, as in our state system today.
As I will argue, it is exactly the lack of a clear demarcation of internal and
external politics that typifies the foundation of many historical, regional
orders. Whereas the state system imposes a rigid, territorial demarcation
of the political community, the nation of citizens versus the alien “Other,”
such demarcation was less rigid and clear-cut in non-European international systems.25
Some types of Constructivist theory thus focus on the types of society
under anarchy rather than interrogate the condition of anarchy itself.
That is, it reduces to a study of processes under anarchy, rather than
question the ontological nature of anarchy. Instead, it is necessary to
examine the bases from which polities demarcate the internal from the
external. Here collective belief systems must be deployed. “We need to
pay much more attention to the general intellectual background, the
22
23
24
25
For example, he notes how different types of institutionalized power and authority are
possible; see Reus-Smit 2013. In his later discussion of culture and international order,
he himself explicitly argues for analyzing nonsovereign state forms as well. Reus-Smit,
2017, 851–85.
Walker 2010.
For a discussion regarding the differences between tribes, chiefdoms, and states, see, e.g.,
Johnson and Earle 1987.
Charles Maier argues persuasively that territoriality is the defining principle of the
modern world that since the mid-nineteenth century has structured power relations
and modes of identification. “Territoriality means simply the properties, including
power, provided by the control of bordered political space, which until recently at least
created the framework for national and often ethnic identity.” Maier 2000, 808.
Collective Beliefs and Visions of Order
41
cultural and ideological milieu, of a particular period, to make sense of
and understand what an agent, or group of agents, was trying to do.”26
My work differs from Wendt’s Constructivism in another sense, particularly from his symbolic interactionist view. For him, “Actors learn to
see themselves as a reflection of how they are appraised by significant
Others. The key variable here is how the Other treats or ‘casts’ the Self.”27
I concur that interaction and mutual casting of Self and Other forms an
important element of identity construction. As the later chapters will
show, the depiction of non-European polities as uncivilized in the nineteenth century fostered a particular European identity, and justified
colonial expansion.28 However, in Wendt’s interactionist view, the specific preexisting character of the polity seems to have few, if any, behavioral consequences. Even when Wendt admits there are internal
processes at work as well, these go unexplored. The pattern of interaction
is privileged as the main explanation, to the extent that regularized interaction resembles game theoretic explanations that explain social patterns
based on the nature of repeat games and iteration over time.29 The agent’s
consciousness and disposition constitute blank slates prior to such
interaction.
Reus-Smit’s view of Constructivism differs in this respect from
Wendt’s. As he notes, “Wendt brackets the corporate sources of state
identity and interest, and concentrates entirely on the constitutive role of
international social interaction . . . The result is a strictly interactive form
of constructivism – a social billiard ball theory.”30
Wendt’s discussion of how one would encounter a new and unknown
actor illustrates my point. He offers the following thought experiment.
Consider an example. Would we assume, a priori, that we were about to be
attacked if we are ever contacted by members of an alien civilization? I think
not . . . action depends on the probabilities we assign, and these are in key part
a function of what the aliens do; prior to their gesture, we have no systemic basis
for assigning probabilities.31
26
28
29
30
31
Rengger 1988, 219. 27 Wendt 1999, 341.
On the relevance of collective identity for explaining European imperialism, see Hall
1999, chapter 8.
The classical work on iterative cooperation is Axelrod 1984. Wendt notes that
a constructivist reading of Axelrod is possible. “But the general logic is transportable:
through repeated acts of reciprocal cooperation, actors form mutual expectations that
enable them to continue cooperating.” However, Wendt notes that for Axelrod, identity
does not change, whereas for Wendt continued cooperation might lead to a shared sense
of community. Wendt 1994, 390.
Reus-Smit 1999, 166.
Wendt 1992, 405. It also strikes me as contradictory to his view that identities are part of
collective and relatively stable views that have developed over time in the interactions
with many other actors than a singular Self–Other dyad. See also Wendt 1992, 397–98.
42
Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
Thus from that perspective there is no reason to expect the agents in
question to be disposed to one type of behavior over another. This
introduces a strange ahistorical view of actors and neglects the social
preconditions and material bases in which those actors are placed even
before any interaction with an Other. We thus miss a generative grammar.
The process of interaction becomes fully determinative of identity, but we
have no particular way of understanding why a given pattern emerges,
other than to trace the repeated interactions between actors over time.
Except for the repeated interaction of “Self” and “Other” there is no
preconception of “Self.” Identity results entirely out of a dyadic process
with “Self” starting with a blank slate.
Take this empirical example as a counterpoint to Wendt’s thought
experiment. When Captain James Cook arrived on the Hawaiian
Islands in January 1778 on his third expedition to the Pacific, the
Hawaiians for the first time were brought in contact with Europeans.
“The Hawaiians considered these extraordinary beings who had broken
through the sky beyond the horizon were thus, like the chief himself, of
a divine nature [sic].”32 However, on his return a year later Cook was
killed by these same Hawaiians. What had transpired?
The Hawaiians approached Cook in this manner because of prior
existing social mores and religious beliefs. The theme of the arriving
foreign divinity is a common one in the Pacific and also in Southeast
Asian legitimating narratives. While Cook’s “divine” arrival was propitious on the first coming, his second arrival, however, coincided with the
festival of the god Lono, with whom Cook was now equated.
Unfortunately for Cook this equation had particular consequences, due
to a common foundational mythology in Hawaii and other Pacific islands.
“Kingship makes its appearance from outside the society. Initially
a stranger and something of a terror, the king is absorbed and domesticated by the indigenous people, a process that passes by way of his
symbolic death and consequent rebirth as a local god.”33 The full articulation of the myth thus required Cook’s demise.
No doubt other interpretations might be given, but my point is that the
Hawaiians’ behavior was not the simple result of the pattern of interactions with Cook, neither when he first arrived, nor due to a pattern of
interactions between his first arrival and the second. The Hawaiians had
preconceptions regarding what an arriving stranger might mean. Those
32
33
Sahlins 1985, 137. The fact that Cook’s ships’ last port of call had been Tahiti, which
equated with the spiritual homeland of the gods, only accentuated his status. Critics have
argued that Sahlins ascribes irrationality to non-European societies. For a critique of
Sahlins’s position, see Lukes 2000, 3–18. As I discuss later, Lukes’s reading is mistaken.
Sahlins 1985, 73.
Collective Beliefs and Visions of Order
43
conceptions derived from a collective belief system that influenced not
only how Hawaiians viewed those external to their community but also
other political communities in a much wider region.34
Even before two actors engage in interactions, they have a prehistory
based on their religious beliefs, their domestic institutions, their understanding of their community’s foundation, as well as previous interactions
with others. Contrary to Wendt’s hypothetical example that we would
have no preconception of amity or enmity when confronted by an alien
race, our perspective would very much be based on our previous experiences with other polities, our understanding of our place in the cosmological order, our views of right order and legitimate authority, and so on.
We do not enter naked into the political world. For example, when the
Dutch arrived in the East Indies (contemporary Indonesia), some indigenous rulers allied with them against the Portuguese and Spanish, but in
such a fashion as to comport with the balance of order required by their
cosmology.35
Finally, my approach parts company with the scientific realist view
advocated by Wendt. Bas van Fraassen describes the approach in the
following terms: “What exactly is scientific realism? Naively stated, it is
the view that the picture science gives us of the world is true, and that the
entities postulated really exist.”36 Scientific realism further holds that
scientific theories are referential and that the mature sciences show progressive approximation to provide a true account of the physical world.
Moreover, predictive success provides evidence of the referential nature
of the theory in question.37
However, as my previous critique of positivism indicated, and as I will
discuss below more extensively with regard to the insights of John Searle,
our understanding of the social world does not comport with the claims
made by scientific realists. Our understanding of the social world is coconstitutive of that world. That is, our theories, our beliefs of what the
world is or should be, simultaneously create the social world which is the
object of study.
Thus in the end the approach of this book finds its closest affinity to
what Ruggie calls Neoclassical Constructivism. It aims to elucidate the
patterns of intersubjective meanings that informed these non34
35
Following Sahlins, Iver Neumann argues that societies encounter each other with preexisting social memories. These memories have evolved out of the historical experience
with other communities prior to the encounter by the societies in question. He borrows
Marshall Sahlins’s concept of “narratives of sociability,” who deploys it to denote the sets
of categories and relationships that are relevant when two parties meet. Neumann 2011,
470, 483.
Andaya 1993a, 145, 152. 36 Van Fraassen 1984, 250. 37 Leplin 1984, 1–2.
44
Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
Westphalian international societies. And at the same time it seeks to
derive causal implications from empirical study of these societies, with
causal analysis understood as narrative exposition.38
My interpretation of Constructivism thus points to the relevance of
cultural analysis and intersubjective meaning. Using a Geertzian “thick
description” of the collective beliefs that underlie political orders can
provide some insights into identity and interaction. Both on epistemological as well as empirical grounds such an approach will prove rewarding,
as I elucidate in the next chapters. In order to understand the foundations
of our own views of international order we benefit from studying systems
which differ dramatically from our contemporary one. For example, what
to make of the galactic empires of Southeast Asia, where the relations
between polities were constructed to mirror their cosmological
understanding?39 Exactly because such social systems and political communities are difficult to comprehend they show the foundational assumptions and concepts through which we understand our present
international system and society.
3.3
The Turn to Historical Sociology and the English School
3.3.1
The Early English School
Half a century ago, Martin Wight, Hedley Bull and the foundational
thinkers of the English School in International Relations argued for the
need to develop a historical sociology of international systems.40 Amidst
the stark realities of the Cold War, however, that call went unheeded,
particularly in the United States. Realist theories that averred that international relations were subject to timeless and recurring patterns held
the day. The bipolar contest pitting the United States against the Soviet
Union mirrored the rivalry between democratic Athens and the garrison
state of Sparta, suggested Dean Acheson at the time.41 That historical
research might question the accuracy of such comparison was immaterial.
The subsequent popularity of Structural Realism accentuated this
view. As noted earlier, for Structural Realists patterns of interaction not
38
39
40
41
Vincent Pouliot labels this form of causal analysis as “constitutive analysis,” the study of
social processes that inform the mechanisms through which we attribute a causal connection between X and Y. Pouliot 2007, 373–74.
Tambiah 1976, chapter 7.
Bull 1977; Watson 1992; Wight 1997. For a brief overview of some of the contributions
of the English School, see Buzan 1993; Navarri 2009.
Beisner 2006, 71.
Collective Beliefs and Visions of Order
45
only resembled each other; they were in fact the same and could as such
allow one to draw generalizable conclusions and propositions.
We need not dwell on the extensive debates that have challenged this
view, and I have articulated my reservations in the preceding chapter.42
Suffice it to say that dissatisfaction with the ahistoricist view of international relations, as well as the changes in the international system since the
end of the Cold War, have sparked a turn to (or perhaps return to) the
historical interpretation of patterns of international order. The founding
scholars of the English School provide a critical point of entry to the
historical study of international systems.43 Hedley Bull’s seminal analysis
of international systems and international societies starts with states as the
key actors. States are independent political communities that possess
internal and external sovereignty, such as city-states, dynastic states,
multinational empires, and modern nation-states.44 A system exists
“where states are in regular contact with one another, and where in
addition there is interaction between them sufficient to make the behaviour of each a necessary element in the calculations of the other.”45
He further argued that while historically there were many systems, only
a few constituted international societies. An international society is only
present if the member states share goals, such as the independence of
individual states; peace; and common goals to all social life-such as the
limitation of bodily harm, keeping promises, and the stabilization of
possession.
A society of states (or international society) exists when a group of states, conscious of common interests and common values, form a society in the sense that
they conceive themselves to be bound by a common set of rules in their relations
with one another, and share in the working of common institutions.46
For Bull, few examples of such international societies existed besides the
modern state system, with only the Classical Greek city-states, China
42
43
44
46
See, e.g., Ashley 1986; and Ruggie 1986.
The historical sociological turn in international relations theory has today found strong
representation in the work of the later English School, particularly in the studies of Barry
Buzan, George Lawson, and many others. The body of literature in this genre is large and
expanding. For examples, see Buzan et al. 1993; Buzan and Little 2000; Buzan et al.
2015; Hobson 2012. But historical sociological approaches have not been restricted to
that school alone. For example, Ferguson and Mansbach have offered analyses of distinct
regional systems ranging from Meso-America to East Asia. Ferguson and Mansbach
1996. David Kang has provided a study of China’s tributary system. Kang 2010a, 2010b.
Andrew Phillips and Jason Sharman have provided an interdisciplinary and comprehensive account of the Indian oceanic system. Phillips and Sharman 2015. Shogo Suzuki has
drawn attention to Japan and international society in East Asia. Suzuki 2009.
Bull 1977, 8–9. 45 Bull 1977, 10.
Bull 1977, 13. The goals of an international society are the same goals he enumerates
under international order (5, 16–19).
46
Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
during the Warring States period, and ancient India as non-European
international societies.47
Contrary to his colleague Martin Wight, Bull denied that patterns of
interactions between polities should be classified as international systems
if these polities did not recognize full sovereignty of their constituent
members, as was the case in the Westphalian system. Contrary to the
Westphalian principles, many non-European rulers legitimated their
authority in universalist terms. They claimed to be world conquerors,
without limits to their domain, and they did not recognize other rulers as
juridical equals. Consequently, Bull concluded that such forms of rule
should be regarded as a single political entity, consisting of a suzerain core
and dependents and not regarded as an international society. While
Wight argued for the inclusion of suzerain state systems within the
ambit of systems research, Bull’s position relegated him to emphasize
the European system alone.48
Adam Watson aimed to integrate both views. On the one hand, he
followed Bull’s definition of system and society. He concurred that systems consisted of independent states that recognized no superior, and
that mutually recognized each other’s claims to independence. However,
he also agreed with Wight that suzerain states and their dependents
should be regarded as state systems. That is, systems could consist of
polities that recognized each other’s independence, but also of polities in
which one or more were paramount to others. A system of independent
states and hierarchical empire were opposite extremes of a continuum in
his view.49 As a result of this position, Watson considered China, India,
Rome, and the Islamic world, as state systems.
Bull and Watson combined to edit the influential The Global Expansion
of International Society, which in many ways captured the key insights of
the early decades of the English School, while also revealing some of its
shortcomings.50 First, the volume left unresolved the contradiction
between Bull’s denial that international systems, and thus international
societies, existed outside of Europe and Watson’s and Wight’s views that
other systems and societies did exist beyond Europe. Tellingly, part one
of the volume was titled “European International Society and the Outside
47
48
49
50
Bull 1977, 15–16.
Wight 1977, chapter 1; Bull 1977, 10–11. On the difference, see also Watson 1992, 3.
Watson 1992, 3–5, 13–14.
Bull and Watson 1984. Tim Dunne and Christian Reus-Smit’s edited volume provides
a useful collection evaluating the premises and problems of the Bull and Watson’s
volume. Tellingly, they titled their collection The Globalization of International Society,
substituting globalization for expansion. Dunne and Reus-Smit 2017.
Collective Beliefs and Visions of Order
47
World,” suggesting international society was restricted to the
Westphalian system alone.
Second, the authors continued to draw a sharp contrast with the
Westphalian system by emphasizing the hierarchical nature of nonEuropean systems. “At the center of each was a suzerain Supreme
Ruler . . . who exercised direct authority over the Heartland; and around
this empire extended a periphery of locally autonomous realms that
acknowledged the suzerain’s overlordship and paid him tribute.”51
Third, they concluded these non-European systems were inward looking, even self-contained.
They had one feature in common: they were all, at least in the theory that underlay
them, hegemonial or imperial . . . Contacts among these regional international
systems (and with the different world of medieval Latin Christendom) were much
more limited than contacts within them. There was some diplomatic communication and military conflict . . . But not even the three Islamic systems (ArabIslamic, Mongol-Tartar, and Indian) may be said to have formed among themselves a single international system or international society.52
This conclusion provided another reason to foreclose a more detailed
study of the non-European polities. Since there were few interactions, let
alone shared norms or rules among these empires, one could deny the
existence of an international society among these empires. Hence, by
seeing these empires as isolated and self-contained one could see
Europe as the exemplary model of international society in which independent actors interacted to a high degree, and which in turn necessitated
the development of shared norms and principles of behavior.
Finally, the expansion of the Westphalian system and European international society was depicted as a rational rule governed process. Bull
thus tended to emphasize the consent and willingness of states to join the
club of “civilized” states.53 This view of voluntary accession elided the
coercive elements in the encounter of the West with other polities and
omitted the application of racist and cultural biases.
In sum, scholars such as Bull continued to dichotomously juxtapose
universal imperial claims with the anarchy of the state system. As
a consequence, this scholarship failed to recognize how universal claims
to rule could in fact be reconciled with a de facto degree of independence
for other polities and low levels of outright coercion. Thus, the
51
52
53
Bull and Watson 1984, 3.
Bull and Watson 1984, 3–4. Watson repeated this statement verbatim. Watson 1992,
215–16.
Dunne and Reus-Smit 2017, 25–26, who particularly refer to Gong’s essay on China in
Watson 1992. For a discussion of how European states excluded other states from the
European international society by labeling them uncivilized, see Keene 2002.
48
Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
performance of ritual submission by tributary states, such as Korea and
Vietnam, to the Chinese emperors made formal imperial control by the
Chinese imperial dynasties unnecessary. Bull failed to recognize, contrary
to Wight, that international societies beyond Europe could flexibly allow
for universalist hierarchical claims and simultaneously allow for the de
facto recognition of autonomous polities. What appeared as a paradox
was only so in the minds of those accustomed to the European view of
order.
Moreover, Bull and others paid insufficient attention to the high degree
of interaction in various regions across the Eurasian space that occurred
against the backdrop of shared collective beliefs. Thus, contrary to the
claim that such empires were self-contained, they missed how across the
Middle East and South Asia, shared narratives, historical legacies, architecture, rituals, and legal frameworks provided every bit the foundation
for an international society that bound the various polities of the Islamic
world together. The same held true for East and Southeast Asia.
3.3.2
Misconstruing the World beyond Europe
The scholars of the early English School were not the only ones to read the
historical record in such a way that it emphasized the uniqueness of the
Westphalian system. Other scholars’ misinterpretations combined with
triumphalist narratives to produce a distorted view of non-European
interstate systems.
The foremost proponent of world systems theory, Immanuel
Wallerstein, also championed the view that non-European systems were
relatively self-contained with sparse interaction between them.
Wallerstein argued that the European region constituted a world
system.54 A world system consisted of a self-contained economic region
with a division of labor encapsulating diverse cultural practices. He
further differentiated world systems into world empires and world
economies.
There have only existed two varieties of such world-systems: world-empires, in
which there is a single political system over most of the area . . . and those systems
in which such a single political system does not exist over all, or virtually all, of the
space . . . we are using the term world-economy to describe the latter.55
Europe constituted a unique case because only there was political order
dispersed over multiple polities across a wide area of economic interaction. It, and only it, constituted a world-economy. All other regions
54
Wallerstein 1974, vol.1, 15.
55
Wallerstein 1974, vol. 1, 348.
Collective Beliefs and Visions of Order
49
unified political hierarchy with the related economic sphere of interaction. “There were world-economies before. But they were always transformed into empires: China, Persia, Rome.”56 Economic and political
interactions occurred within the same geographic space.
Roberto Unger argued for a similar typology, in which the relation of
political rule to commerce tended to take two basic forms. “One solution
is the quasi-autarkic empire. Its most tangible feature is the overall coincidence of economic and political boundaries: most trade takes place
within the borders of a territory that a single government and its officialdom claim to rule.”57 Alternatively, said Unger, commerce could occur
across diverse political authorities. This arrangement he classified as the
overlord-peddler deal, where rulers needed to reach some compromise
with mercantile interests and were limited in their extractive powers of the
mercantile class. The European political fragmentation was an example
of this type, in that it evinced “the incongruence between political and
economic boundaries.”58
This juxtaposition of universalist empires with the European state
system also leads some scholars to conclude that such empires were not
merely self-contained but that the hierarchical authority in such empires
stifled economic and cultural development. They conclude that political
fragmentation constituted a condition for economic development,
whereas hierarchy stifled economic growth. Thus, for Eric Hobsbawn,
“Capitalism was bred as a global system in one continent and not elsewhere, precisely because of the political pluralism of Europe, which
neither constituted nor formed part of a single ‘world empire.’”59
With these interpretations follows the conventional explanation of
European expansion and the “rise of the West” from circa 1500 on. It
was then that the European maritime empires first traversed the Atlantic
and Indian Oceans, “discovered” the Americas and brought Europe into
closer contact with Asia. Being self-contained, the universal empires
lacked competition and innovation, and their economies stagnated. In
Europe, by contrast, competition sparked economic growth, allowing the
European polities to challenge distant, more populous, and larger
empires. As Douglass North stated,
The remarkable development of Western Europe from relative backwardness in
the 10th century to world economic hegemony by the 18th century is a story of
a gradually evolving belief system in the context of competition among
56
58
59
Wallerstein 1974, vol. 1, 16. 57 Unger 1987, 113.
Unger 1987, 115. He further notes that although there were periodic attempts to establish such autarkic empires in Europe, for example, by the Habsburgs, these attempts
ended in failure.
Hobsbawn 1990, 25.
50
Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
fragmented political/economic units producing economic institutions and political structure that produced modern economic growth.60
Contrasting the European case with Chinese stagnation, economic historian Joel Mokyr also sees the lack of competition as a barrier to innovation. The lack of exit options for entrepreneurs led to oppression of
mercantile classes.61 In Europe, by contrast, extraction had to be limited:
merchants, innovators, and financiers had options. Competition favored
those countries that found the right balance between government, financial
institutions, and business interests.
Some scholars went well beyond sober evaluations to argue that the
non-Western world could be considered as backward and stagnant in its
entirety, as Adda Bozeman noted with regard to the Ottoman Empire,
Eastern Europe, Africa, and other parts of Asia (beyond the Ottoman).
“Life in all these regions was generally held immune to change and had in
effect been stationary and retrograde for many centuries when it was
subjected to the impact of the West from about the eighteenth century
onward.”62
Such perspectives lead to a serious misunderstanding. One might conclude these non-European polities were unable and unwilling to adjust to
the Westphalian system that hinged on juridical equality and spatial
delimitation of authority.63 How could the Chinese emperor who governs
all under heaven (Tianxia) brook the insult that made him out to be but
one of many equivalent rulers? How could the Ottoman, Safavid, and
Mughal emperors, all “world conquerors” and Sahib Qiran (lords of the
auspicious conjunction), recognize other monarchs as peers? How might
the Southeast Asian rulers who claimed to be the Chakravartin, the ideal
universal ruler, conceive of spatial limits to their authority since they were
the connection between the sacred and the profane?
Combined, these misconceptions result in an all too familiar triumphalist narrative of how the European system expanded in a unidirectional
60
61
62
63
North 1994, 365; North, 1981. I challenge accounts of stagnation in greater detail in
Spruyt 2017b.
Mokyr 1990.
Bozeman 1960, 440. Discussing China and India, she concluded that “neither was
hospitable to innovation,” and, more broadly, she noted that “in counterpoint to all
other cultures that of the West . . . may be said to have invented progress and reform.”
Bozeman 1960, 389–90. Montesquieu’s shadow of the despotic Oriental ruler still
loomed large.
Ringmar, for example, concludes that the Qing dynasty proved unable to adjust their
cognitive scheme. Ringmar 2012, 17. Hurewitz suggests the Ottomans only adjusted to
the Westphalian principles due to European pressure in the nineteenth century.
Traditionally, they expounded a universalist and combative policy toward the West.
Hurewitz 1961.
Collective Beliefs and Visions of Order
51
fashion. That narrative presupposes the wholesale exportation of
European material organization and mental concepts in order to overcome indigenous resistance.64 Absolutist, even despotic, hierarchy; the
pursuit of autarchy; the lack of innovation; and the inability to be reconciled with the European state system all conspired to resist the victory of
the West. However, Europe’s economic and military prowess thwarted
the universal empires and led in turn to the global expansion of the states
system. With informal and formal empire came Westphalian rules of
order, complete with European norms and principles that cast themselves
globally to govern international relations.
3.3.3
Toward New Interpretations of International Society and Order
The scholars of the classical English School and other advocates of
historical sociology have provided a welcome alternative to the positivist,
ahistorical approach to international relations. However, some of the
earlier research warrants scrutiny. Consequently, a large body of scholarship, including authors with close affinities to the English School, have
reexamined some of the propositions of Bull, Wight, Watson, and other
foundational thinkers. For example, Amitav Acharya, Barry Buzan, and
others have expanded the English School agenda to include more
research on non-European international systems and societies.65 Others
have reexamined Bull and Watson’s views that depicted the extension of
the Westphalian system as a unidirectional process.66 Similarly, Iver
Neumann has pointed out how the early proponents of this School
omitted the dyadic nature of interaction. “To Watson and the early
English School, although there may be setbacks and even reversions,
the conception is of a process where one party imposes its order on the
other, with little or no residue and without being itself changed by the
experience.”67 Overall, the trend toward global history in historical studies has aided in making the study of international relations less
Eurocentric.68
64
65
66
68
For a critique of the classical English School (typified by Bull and Watson) and classical
World Systems Theory (exemplified by Wallerstein) as Eurocentric, see Hobson 2012,
222–42.
See, e.g., Acharya and Buzan 2010. The list of scholars who arguably are part of this
research program is long and would include Andrew Hurrell, Robert Jackson, Edward
Keene, Andrew Linklater, Richard Little, and many others.
See particularly the essay by Welsh 2017, 145–46. 67 Neumann 2011, 469.
For overviews of this turn to global and world history, see Bentley 1996; Manning 1996.
McNeill arguably was one of the recent pioneers of this trend in his analysis of an
emerging global ecumene. McNeill 1963. On the general need for studying polities and
societies as a totality of interconnected processes, see Wolf 1982.
52
Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
With this in mind, I borrow from, but amend, the understanding of
international societies used by the early English School. I define international societies as a set of polities that share foundational collective
beliefs – a collective imagination regarding the nature and purposes of
political and social organization. These beliefs thus serve to define the
nature of the political order and legitimate authority. Second, collective
beliefs demarcate the boundaries of the political community. Who is
rightfully considered a member? Who is deemed an outsider? Third,
they contain formal and informal principles that govern the interaction
between members in the system as well as with polities outside the system.
Fourth, collective beliefs influence the status position of the polities
within the system as well as the status of polities that are not part of that
international society.
This view of international societies is thus explicitly not restricted to
systems that consist of sovereign, territorially demarcated states.69 In
order to understand international systems and the norms and principles
that motivate actors in those systems, one must examine the mode of
differentiation. Who do they regard as the oppositional “Other?” The
criteria for inclusion and exclusion are critical in this regard, as Robert
Walker points out.70 Although iterative interaction plays an important
role, the mode of differentiation depends significantly on a priori selfidentification.71 Identity derives not just from interaction but from the
background of cognitive schemas, collective belief systems that are anterior to the patterns of interaction.
The Chinese tributary system, for example, constituted an international society in which collective beliefs, particularly Confucian rules
and norms, defined the nature of the empire as the medium between
the divine and the mundane worlds. The degree to which individuals
subscribed to, and followed, specific rules and rituals defined the boundaries of the political community. Those civilized by superior Chinese
culture were deemed part of the community, and those who rejected
Confucian principles were deemed foreign or barbarian. Moreover, the
mandate from heaven and the superior status of emperor and empire
prescribed particular rules of conduct. Similarly, the Chinese Board of
Rites assigned other polities who shared these perspectives to particular
69
70
71
Devlen, James, and Özdamar similarly argue that the state system remained paramount
in the classical English School’s focus. Devlen et al. 2005, 171–97.
Walker 2010. For that reason, I am sympathetic to Kees van der Pijl’s terminology, which
uses the term “polity” rather than “state.” His work focuses on the “relations among
communities occupying separate spaces and considering each other as outsiders.” van
der Pijl 2007, vi–vii.
As I suggested in my assessment of Wendt’s views on symbolic interactionism and
identity formation.
Collective Beliefs and Visions of Order
53
status positions, analogous to the distinct position and rank of family
members.
I stress that I do not conceive of international order and international
society as a set of rules and norms to regulate conflict. That is, an
international society might include such rules, but having such rules is
not a necessary precondition in my conceptualization. For Hedley Bull,
by contrast, the European states constituted an international society
because they had explicit rules to safeguard the coexistence of states.
That is, they had established “the complex of rules which restrict the
place of violence in world politics . . . the rules seek to limit the causes or
purposes for which a sovereign state can legitimately begin a war.”72 The
European state system epitomized an international order with rules to
limit violence, and in so doing was, supposedly, distinct from other
regions.
The oddity of that claim, given Europe’s historical record, apparently
gave him no reason to pause. Yet it clearly flies in the face of the historical
record of ubiquitous and ever present war in the European state system.
As Geoffrey Parker observed, “during the sixteenth century, Spain and
France were scarcely at peace, while during the seventeenth . . . the
Austrian Habsburgs and Sweden were at war for two years in every
three, Spain for three years in every four, and Poland and Russia for
four years in every five.”73 All these were part of the Christian commonwealth, identified by Bull as a key foundation of this international
society.74 Thus, while I concur with Bull that the European state system
constituted an international society, the existence of that society was not
premised on the safeguarding of each other’s existence.75
In contrast to Bull’s understanding, my view of international society
comports with the anthropological perspective. We may regard a group of
individuals or a community of actors as constituting a society based on
72
74
75
Bull 1977, 69. 73 Parker 1988, 1.
By contrast, as David Kang notes, East Asia lacked the frequent interstate wars common
in Europe, yet Bull did not recognize the region as having an international society. Kang
2010a, chapter 5.
Andrew Linklater’s discussion of evolutionary civilizing processes echoes Bull’s sentiments. Influenced by the work of Norbert Elias, Linklater argues that a civilizing process
has taken place from the Greeks, through the Renaissance and Enlightenment, to the
present. While he does not use the term “culture” to define this process, the connection
seems clear. European collective beliefs and attitudes have evolved over centuries in a way
that diminishes the propensity for violence. These in turn have had a global impact. As he
optimistically concludes, a new phase of history has emerged in which the use of violence
by the great powers has been tamed. Linklater 2016, 468–71. My view of culture and
collective beliefs is not premised on the liberal universalist assumptions that arguably
underlie his work. For discussions of his work, see Dunne and Devetak 2017; and
Lawson 2017.
54
Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
shared beliefs and common organization. Such social organization might
well contain norms and principles that allow for significant degrees of
violence within that community as well as with others outside of that
community.76
To conclude, I argue then that international societies are defined by the
intersubjective understanding shared by the actors that constitute them.
This perspective shares much in common with the perspectives of international order articulated by Christian Reus-Smit and Andrew Phillips.
Reus-Smit argues that international order contains three key elements:
institutionalized power and authority; an architecture of fundamental
rules that facilitate cooperation and coexistence; and social norms that
legitimate the institutionalized power and the fundamental rules of
society. I particularly share his view that social norms are “deep constitutional structures” that license particular configurations of authority, and
sanction particular types of practices.77
My understanding is also close to Phillips’s conception. For him,
international orders are assemblages consisting of a normative complex
that informs the actors’ collective identity; fundamental institutions that
define the loci of power and authorize the use of force; and a material
foundation that provides the constraints and opportunities on which the
order is based.78 But unlike Phillips, I do not see the material dimension
as a defining element of order. Material constraints no doubt influence
actions but they do not define the ontology of that international society.
Thus, systems with similar distributions of power can evince vastly different views on the nature of the constituent elements, the legitimation of
authority and the relations of those polities with each other. Collective
beliefs determine to which ends material capabilities are deployed.
3.4
A Methodology for a Historical Interpretive Research
3.4.1
Social Facts, Collective Belief Systems, and the Annales School
Interpreting past social and political orders inevitably raises epistemological and methodological questions. What is the epistemological status of
interpretive research that rejects a foundationalist approach, such as that
found in positivism and falsificationism?79 How might one conduct historically informed interpretation of previous societies?
76
77
79
See, e.g., the well-known, if controversial, analysis of the Yanomamö by Napoleon in
Chagnon 1968.
Reus-Smit 2013, 167, 170. 78 Phillips 2011, 23–32.
For a critique of foundationalism, see Rorty 1979.
Collective Beliefs and Visions of Order
55
J. P. Searle provides a useful starting point to tackle both questions.
Searle famously differentiated descriptive statements that described
“brute facts” from performative statements that presupposed the existence of certain institutions.80 My possession of a piece of green paper
constitutes a brute or material fact. By our standards of what constitutes
paper and green ink, we can verify the fact as True or False. But the value
assigned to that paper, of say twenty dollars, constitutes an institutional
fact. Institutional facts exist in the form of a constitutive rule creating the
institutional fact under specified conditions. “X counts as Y in C.”81 We
collectively assign a certain value to the green piece of paper by socially
constructed and collectively understood rules and conditions.
Searle derives from this observation a broader understanding of social
ontology in general. To understand society one must understand the
collective intentionality of that society, the assignment of functions to
certain individuals and institutions, and the society’s constitutive rules
and procedures. “Collective intentionality is the psychological presupposition of all social reality and, indeed, I define a social fact as any fact
involving collective intentionality of two or more human or animal
agents.”82
To try to understand other cultures and societies thus requires us to
explore their collective intentionality, their rules for ordering society. It
will not do to unconsciously deploy our understanding and concepts to
those societies. Contrary to claims that we can apply value neutral concepts across history to other societies, we must come to grips, as best we
can, with how they saw their worlds.83 As the later Wittgenstein argued,
the meaning of words must be understood in their context. At the same
time we can have no assurance that the meaning of a word or of a given
action has the same connotation now as it did in the past.84
This suggests we should tread with caution when we see other periods
and regions as data to confirm or falsify theories that have largely been
developed with our modern and Western experience in mind. For example, Victoria Tin-Bor Hui and Alastair Iain Johnston have provided
compelling analyses of China ranging from the Warring States to
China’s various imperial dynasties. Johnston thus submits that Chinese
texts reveal realist strategic calculations, not dissimilar to the calculations
80
82
83
84
Searle 1964, 54. 81 Searle 2006, 23.
Searle 2006, 16–17. See also Pouliot 2007, 373–74.
For an example of an attempt to deploy a value neutral concept of the “state,” see Butcher
and Griffiths 2017. For my critique of this approach, see Spruyt 2017c, 8–10.
This position is most articulated particularly by the historical approach of
R. G. Collingwood and the philosophical position of Peter Winch, the latter heavily
influenced by his reading of Wittgenstein. Winch 1990.
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Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
of contemporary great powers. Hui explains the rise of the Qin Empire by
deploying theories that account for European state formation.85
My point is not to evaluate whether their arguments are persuasive.
However, I suggest that we also ask whether it is appropriate to classify
certain phenomena within our established theoretical framework. Are our
foundational assumptions correct? How did the actors themselves explain
or justify their behavior? If we do not question our assumptions and
preconceptions, we foreclose the possibility that the ancient Greeks
indeed went to war to preserve their honor rather than assume they
were driven by calculated balancing behavior. As Ned Lebow reminds
us, “Thucydides considered the threat Athenian power posed to Spartan
identity, not their security, the fundamental reason why the Spartan
assembly voted for war.”86 Or we ignore out of hand that the East Asian
regional order was driven by the Chinese view to encompass all under
heaven (Tianxia), and we dismiss symbolism and rituals as simply epiphenomenal window dressing to the material bases of power. And thus,
more fundamentally, by reducing history to universal propositions
regarding how actors behave we foreclose self-reflection on our conceptions of our political and social world.
Empirical observation alone seldom suffices to settle the issue of
whether our understanding of a given action is correct. Observed behavior in one instance and observed behavior in another instance might
carry completely different meanings even if they appear similar.87 Actions
and behavior only obtain meaning in the particular context in which they
take place, and as understood by the actors themselves.88 Quentin
Skinner’s approach to the study of history and political thought makes
the same point, and indeed builds on the work of Wittgenstein, Austin,
Searle, and other philosophers of language, as well as Collingwood’s
interpretivist approach to historical studies.89 Rather than apply inappropriate contemporary paradigms to the past, interpretation requires
investigating the context in which actions take place and utterances are
made. Research should start not by generating abstract ideas but “rather
by describing as fully as possible the complex and probably contradictory
85
86
87
88
89
Johnston 1995; Hui 2005.
Lebow 2008, 71. In contrast to such standard realist accounts, Ned Lebow submits that
political actions might be explained by human motives, such as appetite, spirit, reason,
and fear, which he finds in classical Greek texts but which motivate modern politics as
well.
MacIntyre 1976.
Pitkin thus argues that our very concepts consist of compounds distilled from the situations in which we use that term. The particular language game in which the term is used
gives it a specific meaning. Pitkin 1972, 70.
Skinner 1978, x, fn. 2; See also Rogers 1990, 262–64.
Collective Beliefs and Visions of Order
57
matrix within which the idea or event to be explained can be most meaningfully located.”90
Understanding speech is not simply getting the locutionary meaning
right, it involves understanding the intent of the speech act, its illocution,
as well as its effect, the perlocution. If actor A promises to abide by the
terms of a peace treaty she has just concluded with B, there is the locutionary act that enables us to understand what was said. But what to make
of the promise? Was it a ruse by A to lull B into a false sense of security?
Did both parties understand the treaty the same way? Did actor B really
believe that A indeed intended to fulfill the terms of the agreement? The
study of history involves the same set of questions. “Thus the interpretive
approach Skinner advocates, that of situating each text in the intellectual
matrix from which it arose . . . promises not just an understanding of the
meaning of the text but also at least a preliminary stage in its
explanation.”91
An interpretation of the past by means of studying collective belief
systems resembles the attempts by anthropologists to understand alien
cultures. Culture as an analytic concept has been notoriously difficult to
pin down. In political science it is sometimes deployed to denote political
attitudes, ideas regarding security and economics, or more broadly to
describe identity or ideology.92 Anthropologists fare no better. Clifford
Geertz recalls that as a student at Harvard he was part of a project that
sought to tabulate the multiple ways in which the concept was used. He
came to a sobering 171 uses.93 My previous discussion of the Annalistes’
focus on collective mentalities and collective belief systems suggests that
culture should be understood in a broad sense. I thus see collective belief
systems as very similar to Geertz’s views.
Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to
be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in
search of meaning.94
90
92
93
94
Skinner 1966, 213. 91 Rogers 1990, 267.
See, e.g., the discussion by Sheri Berman 2001. The seminal work by Almond and Verba
equated culture with political values, such as trust in government and the level of
participation. Almond and Verba 1963. Others view culture as a collective mind-set or
operational code that drives organizational behavior, as, for example, in Kier 1997. For
further discussion of the multiple ways scholars have conceptualized culture, see Ross
1997.
Geertz 2000, 12.
Geertz 1973, 5. For a discussion of Geertz’s oeuvre, see White 2007. Gellner concurs
with Geertz’s emphasis on ritual and performance but critiques him for not generating
a broader typology to facilitate a more general theory. Gellner 1999.
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Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
This is quite similar to how some sociologists understand how culture
defines fields of action. For example, George Thomas suggests that
“Culture has both an ontological aspect, assigning reality to actors and
action, to means and ends; and it has a significatory aspect, endowing
actor and action, means and ends, with meaning and legitimacy.”95
Sahlins’s invocation for how to study other societies strikes me as very
similar in intent. “The creation of meaning is the distinguishing and
constituting quality of men . . . such that by processes of differential
valuation and signification, relations among men . . . are organized.”96
This in no way entails that culture refers to a realm of ideas devoid from
material consequences; culture is not “walking about on the thin air of
symbols.”97 Material practices, however, are mediated by interpretive
schemes. These schemes inform how individuals understand and deal
with the material world around them.
I use several terms throughout this book to denote the same idea. Thus,
I interchangeably deploy terms such as “shared collective beliefs,” “collective imagination,” and “shared cognitive schemes.” These provide the
“webs of significance” through which actors understand and give meaning to their actions, what Geertz and Sahlins would simply describe as
“culture.”
Reflecting on terms and concepts also drives home Wittgenstein’s
insight that we are prisoners of our own language. Terms such as
“state” and “international relations” suggest familiar forms of government and the relations between them. But to what extent do they capture
distinct forms of rule, in which kings claimed to be world conquerors, or
to be the Chakravartin, the universal and ideal ruler?
Rather than try to expand our vocabulary with new terms that confuse
more than they elucidate, I have opted to use conventional terms that
historians and area specialists have deployed to explain the nonWestphalian systems that are the subject of this book. Contextual narrative and adjectives will serve to illuminate differences where they exist.
Thus, when using the term “state” I merely denote a form of polity that
aggregates individuals above the level of chiefdoms and tribes.98 In this
sense, the galactic empires of Southeast Asia and the Chinese Empire can
be said to constitute “states.” However, they do not constitute states in
the sense of sovereign, territorial states in the Westphalian system, nor do
95
96
Thomas et al. 1987, 21. They add “action also creates the actor”(23). Bukovansky
analyzes political culture in terms of discourse regarding legitimate authority.
Bukovansky 2002, 37. She adds “legitimacy constitutes authority and authority wields
power” (27).
Sahlins 1976, 102. 97 Sahlins 1976, 206. 98 Johnson and Earle 1987, 21.
Collective Beliefs and Visions of Order
59
they constitute states in the Weberian sense of bureaucratic, rational
administration with a monopoly of force.
I similarly will use the term “international” to denote relations between
different polities, even if the early modern polities were the very opposite
of homogeneous nations. To emphasize this point, I have interchangeably
used terms as “interstate” or “international” or “interpolity” to remind us
of our preconceptions as we analyze the particularities of these orders.
3.4.2
Tracing Collective Beliefs and Shared Intersubjective
Meaning
How do we know that polities shared collective beliefs, or that shared
intersubjective meaning motivated their actions? Or, phrased more formally, how can we operationalize collective beliefs and culture as a variable?99 I argue that to understand how collective beliefs and
imaginations operated, and made power and authority manifest, we
need to examine how beliefs were transposed to material realities, constituting the institutional facts of their time.100
In this spirit, I follow how Jacques le Goff and Georges Duby studied
medieval collective beliefs, mentalités collectives – a topic that had been of
interest to the founders of the Annales approach, for example, Marc
Bloch in his study of the feudal period and Lucien Febvre’s studies of
religion and geography. How did the people of the Middle Ages understand their world? How did they lead their lives? All sorts of evidence were
deployed to understand the material and mental world of the medieval
individual.
In the post–World War II period, Fernand Braudel’s epic studies gave
a more materialist basis to the Annales study of history. Braudel critiqued
the events based analysis of individual actions and suggested that individuals failed to understand the conjunctural and structural historical
dynamics of their time, the “Moyenne Durée” and “Longue Durée.”
Those mid-range and long-term constraints had to be deciphered by the
historian.101 The work by Le Goff and Duby brought the Annales back to
99
100
101
If we are content to trace culture simply by observing behaviors, we run the risk of
tautology, since we would be operationalizing culture by the very outcome we wish to
explain, as Ned Lebow warns. Lebow 2008, 119.
Textual analysis of historical documents does not suffice for multiple reasons: texts
themselves are interpretive accounts; they are sometimes manipulated for instrumental
purposes; there are issues of translation and meaning; written texts can be very rare (as
with pre-Modern Southeast Asia), etc. Hence, I focus on analyzing cultural practices in
a broad approach.
See Clark’s discussion of some of the structuralist and materialist dimensions of
Braudel. Clark 1985, 189.
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Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
issues that had been of original interest, the study of collective mentalities,
but they adopted the idea that cultural patterns too could have conjunctural and structural effects. Culture was not to be understood as the
variant tastes of the moment, but as long-term cognitive frames that
influenced people’s perceptions and actions. Georges Duby thus argued
that a pattern of collective beliefs and their material manifestation had
dominated France for almost a millennium.102
The Annales scholarship provides an example of how we might examine the collective beliefs that inform political and social life by using
a broad interdisciplinary approach.103 Intersubjective beliefs were made
“real” in the caste structure of society, in the building of towering cathedrals that dwarfed the wooden shacks of those who built them, the legal
system, inheritance patterns, and even in the funeral rites of people who
were told that the chances of their salvation were slim to none.104 Such
beliefs were not epiphenomenal to underlying material factors, they created the material world in their own right. While these collective belief
systems were ontologically subjective, given that they were the product of
intersubjective understandings, they were epistemically objective in that
they created institutional facts.105 Collective beliefs inspired medieval
men and women to make the world around them in the images they
held. Collective beliefs existed not merely in the minds of men and
women but were present in everyday life.106
Likewise, we must gain insight into collective belief systems by broadening our perspectives and by triangulating across domains.
Understanding a community’s collective beliefs requires investigation of
how beliefs manifest themselves through actions, rituals, texts, religious
practices, and architecture.
Through rituals, citizens form collective identities around material nodal points,
such as monuments, coliseums, and other public spaces. Combined with the
emotional appeal of the substantive content of a people’s myths and
102
103
104
105
106
He concluded that “this mental representation has withstood all the pressures of history.
It is a structure.” Duby 1980, 5.
Likewise, Reus-Smit argues for a broad cross-field approach drawing on work in anthropology, history, sociology, and political theory. Reus-Smit 2017, 853.
Le Goff argues that medieval men and women lived in constant fear of damnation and
insecurity based on biblical interpretations. Le Goff 1988, 325. Understanding such
beliefs illuminates the ability of the church to command people and vast resources. The
church had the power to define ultimate ends.
Searle 2006, 15.
The influence of the Annales approach has gone in many directions and many disciplines that were hardly foreseen by the Annales scholars. It influenced, for example,
Marshall Sahlins’s discussion of practices in the Pacific Islands at the time of Captain
James Cook. Sahlins 1985, xiv, 125, fn. 11.
Collective Beliefs and Visions of Order
61
symbols . . ., the monuments and architecture of both premodern and modern
public spaces are constitutive of identities.107
This approach is similar to how Marc Howard Ross thinks about
culture. In order to understand culture and deploy it analytically we
must look at its practical manifestations.
Culture is a worldview offering a shared account of action and its meaning and
providing people with social and political identities; it is manifested in a way of life
transmitted (with changes and modifications) over time, and embodied in
a community’s institutions, values, and behavioral regularities.108
I submit therefore that we can discern particular patterns of collective
beliefs in early modern, non-European societies, even while recognizing
the infinite variations through which such belief systems are locally transformed and adapted. These patterns create conditions and frames
through which individuals understand and act upon their world.
3.4.3
The Flexibility of Performative Scripts
Ceremony and ritual play a key role in making collective beliefs manifest
and defining the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, particular in
polities in which spatial demarcation does not serve as markers of interiority and exteriority.109 Performing the appropriate rituals can legitimate
claims by new rulers, such as those of the ethnically Manchu (the Qing
dynasty) emperors when they displaced the Ming dynasty of Han ethnicity. Mongol and Manchu rulers could become “Chinese” emperors,
with the right display and deference to prescribed rituals. The Han
bureaucratic elites in turn could claim that such rulers had become
civilized and transformed by the superior logic of “all under heaven,”
thereby maintaining the preexisting cultural order. The exterior Other
could thus be transformed to the interior Self.
Ceremonies and rituals also serve to recall past grandeur and traditions.
They ground the contemporary in the past – real or imagined. Rulers in
107
108
109
Acuff 2012, 132. Anthony Smith likewise stresses the importance of rituals in the
creation of ethnic and national identity. Smith 1986.
Ross 1997, 72. Charles Taylor thus notes with regard to intersubjective meanings, “It is
not just that the people in our society all or most have a given set of ideas in their heads
and subscribe to a given set of goals. The meanings and norms implicit in these practices
are not just in the minds of the actors but are out there in the practices themselves.”
Taylor 1971, 27.
Lest one think of this as a feature of early modern polities, more than fifty years ago,
Murray Edelman had already pointed to the relevance of symbolism and language in
contemporary politics. Edelman 1998, 131–39.
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Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
the Middle East and Central Asia thus invoked the legacy of the great
world conquerors in their displays.
Shared collective beliefs become particularly important for defining the
relevant social collective beyond the immediate family, clan, or tribe. The
latter social groups consist of personal networks with face to face contact,
and members who often know each other. Individuals are socialized into
the group by parents and the extended family. For the formation of larger
social groups and political organizations, other mechanisms are required
in order to aggregate individual identities. These larger entities bring
individuals together who do not share descent, family ties, or immediate
physical presence.
Studies of nationalism have recognized this most astutely. The nation
requires that individuals identify as an imagined community. Nationalism
is thus a collective identity, forged around a real or fictitious common
heritage and aspires to its own territorial state.110 But in order to create
this common identity, the nation-building project also involves disengaging from more immediate ties of family and clan. Indeed, the underlying
processes out of which nations emerged involved a radical change in
collective mentality. Besides the decline of sacred communities and language, it even entailed a change in the conception of time itself, the
decline of “Messianic time, a simultaneity of past and future in an instantaneous present.”111
Nation building thus explicitly involves a process of making the nation
manifest. The imagined community must be experienced as “real,” as
ontologically given, in order for individuals to identify with the nation to
the point of being willing to sacrifice their lives. Historical accounts,
narratives, rituals, and mythologies – accurate or fictitious – are all
deployed to make the nation present in collective imagination.112
Rituals also create structure when organization hinges on personal ties
rather than on impersonal roles. Contrary to the Weberian bureaucratic
state model of recent modernity, most early modern polities constituted
capstone governments.113 Their rulers had limited material ability to
imprint their authority on heterogeneous populations. Consequently,
William Roosen’s conclusion that in early modern Europe “ceremonial
and pageantry of all kinds served the important function of illustrating
110
111
112
113
Anderson 1991; Gellner 1983.
Anderson follows Walter Benjamin in this. Anderson 1991, 24.
See the collection of essays in Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983.
The concept of capstone government is developed in Gellner 1983, 8–10. Patricia
Crone describes its relevance for understanding Islamic societies. Crone 1989. For its
general relevance across early modern empires, see also Spruyt 2013, 26.
Collective Beliefs and Visions of Order
63
and reinforcing the authority, dignity, and legitimacy of rulers,” holds
even more so for Asia and the Islamic World.114
Rituals and performative scripts thus have ontological effects. They
constitute practices that affect material conditions and institutional outcomes. They can even create the opening space for new actors to be
accommodated into, or insert themselves into, the existing political
order. Thus, the Dutch and Portuguese could be listed as tributary states
to the Chinese emperors, since they performed the ritual kowtow. Their
willingness to deferentially engage the Chinese emperor according to
imperial rituals reaffirmed the imperial authority of the Ming and Qing
emperors for their foreign as well as domestic audiences. The later British
unwillingness to do so, by contrast, amounted to a challenge of imperial
legitimacy and could thus not be accepted.115 Indeed, it would be several
decades before another Western diplomat was granted an imperial audience after the Macartney mission.
Moreover, rituals have a monitoring and demonstrating function. They
signal who is willing to adhere to given norms and principles, who is part
of the group. Even when actors hypocritically engage in performance they
can reinforce the performative scripts that delineate how actors can
behave. For example, if I attend religious services without believing in
that particular religious doctrine, I am engaging in performance. I might
do so to fit in with my neighborhood or social group but do not consider
myself as one of the faithful. However, my performance also necessitates
that I follow particular patterns of behavior. I will have to occasionally
attend services in my church, temple, or mosque; abide by the more
obvious rules (do not swear in public); go to communion; and so on. In
so doing, I reaffirm the institutional practices of that religion. As Sahlins
notes, social sciences tend to emphasize the causal role of institutions in
influencing conduct. In so doing, social sciences neglect that the causal
arrow might also flow in the other direction: performative statements can
also create the institutional relation as, for example, vows do during
a marriage ceremony.116
Finally, diplomatic ceremonials and rituals also serve as a means of
nonverbal communication, specifically situational communication. Not
only do they convey information to the participants regarding the relative
status, wealth, and power of the actors; they constitute the relationship
itself. The very ability to perform a specific ritual indicates the status of
the performer.117
114
117
Roosen 1980, 472.
Roosen 1980, 467.
115
Hevia 1995.
116
Sahlins 1985, xi.
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Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
3.4.4
Patterns, Not Structural Determinism
To argue that one should focus on the study of collective beliefs and
interpretive context in order to understand social and political organization is not to say that we are destined to typologize a seemingly endless
number of polities and regional orders, all of which might appear sui
generis. The research by Georges Dumézil, Jacques Le Goff, Pierre
Bourdieu, Mircea Eliade, and other scholars suggests how we might
discern certain commonalities among diverse polities, even if local inflections give these distinct shapes.
Dumézil is widely heralded with recognizing a tripartite ordering in all
Indo-European cultures. The Annales scholars recognized this tripartite
scheme in the division of three castes – clergy, warriors, and laborers – in
medieval Europe. Nevertheless, Dumézil argued that while cultures
might share common motifs, myths, and social functions, they developed
in diverse ways depending on local adaptation and context.118 Dumézil
explicitly denied being the structuralist that he is sometimes made out to
be and instead emphasized local adaptation from a common form.
Similarly we can discern other patterns in non-European societies.119
As I will show in the subsequent chapters, in Southeast Asia motifs
strongly indicate both the importance of the principle of quadripartite
cardinal orientation, as well as the influence of Hindu and Buddhist
cosmology. Quadripartite motifs also influenced Chinese perceptions of
cosmology and political order.120
To be clear, I am not arguing that we should replace the structuralism
of positivist international relations with structuralism of a different type,
such as that proposed by Lévi-Strauss, who contended that similarities
exist across societies due to the innate qualities of human cognitive
processes. For him, diverse cultures could be subsumed under “general
laws that govern our mental operations.”121
We can, however, discern certain patterns of cultural motifs and collective beliefs, even while recognizing local variation and agency. Or as
Bourdieu would suggest, one’s actions, preferences, tastes, and behavior
occur within socially constructed fields.122 However, these fields are not
static but instead are subject to constant negotiation and interrogation. As
we will see, this tension between commonalities across societies and local
118
119
120
122
Littleton 1974, 152–55.
For example, some scholarship suggests that Dumézil’s trifunctionality in IndoEuropean cultures can be discerned as well in the architecture of Javanese temple
complexes. Knipe 1974, 164.
Mingming Wang 2012, 337–83. 121 See Skinner 1985, 18.
Bourdieu 1977, 72.
Collective Beliefs and Visions of Order
65
variation emerges, for example, when retracing Indic cultural influences
on collective belief systems and social order in Southeast Asia.
Admittedly this approach to the comparative analysis of international
societies serves to illuminate differences but does not lend itself to strict
corroboration or falsification of specific hypotheses. Social scientists who
wish for a strict comparison by methods of difference, or methods of
agreement, and isolation of single causal variables might be
disappointed.123 Monocausal explanations will likely elude us. All who
engage in the complexities of macro-historical comparison run this risk.
As Marc Bloch remarked, “The monism of cause can be, for history, only
an impediment. History seeks for causal wave-trains and is not afraid,
since life shows them to be so, to find them multiple.”124
Nevertheless, while a strict methodological design eludes us, comparisons will reveal some similarities in how universal empires dealt with
common problems. All had to find ways to integrate highly diverse
populations. All also had to find means to accommodate various contending elite groups, without diluting imperial power by handing control
to their intermediaries.125 They did so in ways that differed substantially
from those associated with contemporary nation-states. And finally, all
the non-Westphalian systems also had to come to grips with the West.
The latter imposed exogenous pressures on all societies beyond Europe.
How those societies dealt with those pressures was mediated by their
preexisting logics of organization and collective beliefs.
3.5
Critical Hermeneutics
3.5.1
Gadamer and the Fusion of Horizons
The study of distinct international societies requires a hermeneutic epistemological stance. Hermeneutic research suggests that the explanation
of human action should proceed from the attempt to “recover and interpret the meanings of social actions from the point of view of the agents
performing them.”126
As Hans-Georg Gadamer suggests, all subjects, as part of the human
community, operate within a matrix of communication. The subject’s
123
124
125
126
On the methodology of comparative case design, see Lijphart 1971; and Eckstein 1975.
Bloch 1953, 193–94.
All these empires thus had to deal with the problems of principal-agent control. Given
the lack of infrastructural power, principals had to find various means to bind the agents
to the objectives pursued by the principal. On principal-agent issues, see Miller 1992.
Skinner 1985, 6. Charles Taylor argues that explanations occur within a hermeneutic
circle. Comprehension can only take place within a shared language. Meaning occurs
within a shared field. Taylor 1971, 6.
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Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
knowledge occurs within the confines and residues of previously acquired
social knowledge. There is no “objective” or “past” world to be discovered independent from the knowing subject. A scholar cannot interpret
a past set of events or a different political system without bringing her own
prejudices and predispositions to bear. The subject is intrinsically bound
within a shared and intersubjectively understood history.127 As Gadamer
phrases it:
Our usual relationship to the past is not characterized by distancing and freeing
ourselves from tradition. Rather, we are always situated within traditions, and this
is no objectifying process – i.e., we do no conceive of what tradition says as
something other, something alien. It is always part of us.128
Hermeneutical interpretation accepts our inability to view history at
a distance. Viewing past regional systems as objects to be discovered and
studied in ever increasing detail, in order to approach what a particular
political order was “really” all about, remains impossible. We are inextricably bound in our reading and knowledge by our contemporary views,
our matrix of knowledge. We cannot suspend our contemporary knowledge of, say, Chinggis Kahn, and transpose ourselves into the mind-set of
the Mongol community at that time. We know of the various exploits of
his rule, his successors, and the history of the Mongols from then on to the
present. This historical legacy, such as it has been interpreted by centuries
of accounts and scholarship, is part of what we bring to our understanding
of that period of rule. Historicity entails that we are part of a historical
matrix that constantly evolves.
To understand this point one might reflect on how one should pursue
the interpretation of ancient legal texts. Advocates of traditional interpretive approaches suggest the ancient text can be recovered in its true,
original meaning. In order to understand the meaning of the text, we must
investigate the motives of its authors. What was the purpose of the law?
What were the conditions at that time? Excavate long enough and sooner
or later one will recover the true meaning of the text.
Thus, during the twelfth century, Italian jurists, the Glossatores,
turned to annotating Roman legal texts, such as Justinian’s codes, the
legal codes of the fifth and sixth centuries.129 A traditional interpretivist
approach suggests that recovering the Justinian code’s meaning should be
possible with open mindedness and careful research. Historical distance
127
128
129
Dallmayr 1981, 289.
Gadamer 2013, 208. Influenced by Collingwood, E. H. Carr similarly opined that
“history is therefore a process of interaction between the historian and the past of
which he is writing.” Carr 1956, 10.
For a discussion of the Glossatores, see Berman 1983, 246, 254.
67
Collective Beliefs and Visions of Order
130
does not present an insurmountable problem. The Glossatores should
thus be able to recover the “true” intent and purpose of the old Roman
codes.
However, from a critical historicist perspective, that is to say from
Gadamer’s hermeneutic perspective, the annotations written in the margins of the Justinian texts were not a recovery of the original text but an
engagement with the text within the understanding and needs of the late
medieval period. Rather than “discover” the Justinian code, the
Glossatores, such as Bartolus de Sassaferrato, unavoidably brought
their own prejudices and understanding to bear on the legal text to
make it present and understood in their time. The Glossa in conjunction
with the original text, not just the original text itself, created a new legal
reality.
This is the point at which the attempt to critique historical hermeneutics has to
start. The overcoming of all prejudices, this global demand of the Enlightenment,
will itself prove to be a prejudice, and removing it opens the way to an appropriate
understanding of the finitude which dominates not only our humanity but also
our historical consciousness.131
Thus, for Gadamer, “Understanding is not a matter of forgetting our
own horizon of meanings and putting ourselves within that of the alien
texts or the alien society; it means merging or fusing our own horizons
with theirs.”132 Gadamer emphasizes the term “fusion of horizons”
numerous times. “Every experience has implicit horizons of before and
after, and finally fuses with the continuum of the experiences present in
the before and after to form a unified flow of experience.”133
Our experience is culturally and historically mediated. Any interpretation thus proceeds from within its own context. It is not possible to stand
“outside” of our own history. Consequently, I do not claim that the
following interpretation of different international societies must be
viewed as foundational, closer to the empirical “truth.” Instead, the aim
is to destabilize our assumptions about what political order means, and
our assumptions regarding the interactions between different polities. By
destabilizing our assumptions, we gain new ways of viewing our own
world. This study thus aims to suggest a dialogue regarding prevalent
understandings of modern international society, which have undoubtedly
130
133
Outhwaite 1985, 26. 131 Gadamer 2013, 204. 132 Outhwaite 1985, 25.
Gadamer 2013, 171. Paul Ricoeur’s discussion of the transcendental ego makes
a similar point as Gadamer. Contrary to the Cartesian “I,” Ricoeur argues that the “I”
exists in relation to social experiences, that the “I” is intertwined with the experiences of
humankind. Ricoeur 1976, 688.
Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
68
been influenced by Western conceptions, and alternative logics of interpolity organization beyond the European sphere.
3.5.2
Interpretation and Causal Argumentation
Critical hermeneutics and interpretive studies raise in some scholars the
fear of radical epistemological relativism and the surrender of causal
explanation.134 That fear is misplaced. First, there is no reason to conclude that interpretation and causal explanation are per definition distinct
enterprises. Description often involves tracing causal connections even if
the interpretive approach challenges the idea of causal laws. Thus Geertz
submits that, “If you get interpretation right, I believe the causes will fall
out . . . Everything is causes.”135 Similarly, Skinner argues that the demarcation between description and explanation is erroneous, both are
intertwined.136
Moreover, critical hermeneutics does not suspend our ability of
critical evaluation or assessment. It does not entail radical incommensurability. Indeed, when Gadamer suggests a fusion of horizons,
it cannot mean radical incommensurability, given that such
a condition would make such a fusion entirely impossible. To integrate or try to understand a distant horizon, that is, distant in region
or time, presupposes some level of shared existence qua human
beings. The other culture might be difficult to comprehend in all its
details and intent, but we can recognize it as a cultural totality,
a cultural system, rather than a compilation of nonsensical actions.
Difficult as cultural interpretation might be, it does not logically
mean that knowledge of the other horizon is per definition foreclosed.
Likewise, Skinner objects to the argument that a critique of positivism condones one to relativism. “To insist on the uniqueness of
every idea or event could make it impossible to explain anything.”137
Moreover, as Jürgen Habermas and Martin Hollis and Steven Lukes
argue, interpretive methodology does not and should not lead to the
abandonment of social theorizing.138 While Lukes persuasively argues
against a strong relativist position, he incorrectly assigns the latter position to Sahlins and Winch. Lukes suggests that, “If the members of
S really did not have our criteria of truth and logic, we would have no
grounds for attributing to them language, thought or beliefs and would
134
135
138
For example, Steven Lukes suggests that approaches such as that of Wittgenstein,
Sahlins, and Winch constitute a strong relativist position. Lukes 2000, 13.
Gerring 2003, 27. 136 Skinner 1966, 214. 137 Skinner 1966, 200.
Habermas bases his argument on his theory of communicative action. Habermas 1984.
Also see Hollis and Lukes 1982, 1–20.
69
Collective Beliefs and Visions of Order
139
a fortiori be unable to make any statements about them.” But it seems
to me that neither Sahlins nor Winch, or for that matter Geertz, would
disagree. If they did it would make any contextual account of a different
culture logically impossible. Instead, they argue that what counts as
rational behavior and criteria of truth depends on the specific context in
which the action is understood and undertaken by the participants
themselves.
Peter Winch, consequently, argues he is misunderstood when his position is equated with radical relativism. We have as human beings features
in common. “The very conception of human life involves certain fundamental notions – which I call limiting conditions.”140 Invoking
Giambattista Vico, he refers to the notions of birth, death, and sexual
relations.
Their significance here is that they are inescapably involved in the life of all known
human societies in a way which gives us a clue where to look, if we are puzzled
about the point of an alien system of institutions. The specific forms which these
concepts take, the particular institutions in which they are expressed, vary very
considerably from one society to another; but their central position within
a society’s institutions is and must be a constant factor.141
3.5.3
Dialogue and Cross-Cultural Introspection Rather
than Essentialism
Any analysis of non-European collective beliefs raises the specter of
Orientalism and Essentialism. As Edward Said famously argued, particularly since the late eighteenth century on to the present Western scholarship,
institutions, art, and politics had created an Oriental Other. “Orientalism
was ultimately a political vision of reality whose structure promoted the
difference between the familiar (Europe, the West ‘us’) and the strange (the
Orient, the East, ‘them’).”142 This differentiation entailed multiple binaries
such as superiority–inferiority, progress–retardation, civilized–uncivilized.
As he noted: “On the one hand there are Westerners, and on the other there
are Arab-Orientals; the former are . . . rational, peaceful, liberal, logical,
139
141
142
Lukes 2000, 13. 140 Winch 1964, 322.
Winch 1964, 322. Wittgenstein also saw description as interrelated with causal explanation. Description is part of explanation in tracing the path that leads to a given outcome:
“In some cases it means telling the way which one has gone oneself: in others it means
describing a way which leads there and is in accordance with certain accepted rules.”
Wittgenstein 1965, 14. Winch articulates the Wittgensteinian view most forcefully in
Winch 1990. MacIntyre concurs in many respects with Winch but disagrees with Winch
that one cannot go beyond a society’s own self-description. MacIntyre 1976.
Said 1978, 43. For a discussion of how research might proceed in the spirit advocated by
Said, see Biswas 2007.
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Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
capable of holding real values, without natural suspicion; the latter are none
of these things.”143
Said’s work has been followed by a vast body of scholarship in postcolonial and subaltern studies, with significant differences among the
various strands of that scholarship. Its impact has been substantial with
scholars who are not typically associated with postcolonial studies becoming mindful of the pitfalls of previous cultural analyses.144
The postcolonial critique encompasses claims of Orientalism,
Essentialism, Racism, and Eurocentrism. Several elements stand out in
the postcolonial critiques of cultural studies.145 First, cultural analyses of
non-Western societies have often been essentialist in that they depict
a homogeneous Other and elide or neglect intergroup diversity. Second,
cultural analysis of non-Western groups depicts such communities as
irrational. For example, in a well-publicized debate, Gananath
Obeyesekere accused Marshall Sahlins that his account of Captain
Cook’s apotheosis and subsequent demise, to which I alluded earlier,
reduced the Hawaiians to irrational individuals – and indeed suggested
that Sahlins was motivated by racist sentiments. Third, cultural studies of
non-European societies suggest a natural antinomy of the West versus the
Non-West. Fourth, the non-Western societies are depicted as static,
lacking agency and dynamism. As Chakrabarty notes, Europe is assigned
a central position to explain past historical processes, as well as world
politics in general.146
Given these concerns, can one argue that a given society has a collective
belief system, a culture, that is relatively stable in time and place, and yet
do justice to individual agency? The issue revolves around the age old
trade-off between the theoretical conceptualizations of a given culture
and the infinite variety of actual practices.
143
144
145
146
Said 1978, 49.
Reus-Smit argues that cultural studies tend to exhibit several weaknesses: they essentialize culture, they tend to neglect how institutions foster cultural diversity, the structural
power of international orders is neglected, and they focus almost exclusively on sovereign states. Reus-Smit 2017, 853–56. Arguably, this book addresses those issues. In
addition to avoiding essentialism, I show how cultural forms allowed for institutional
diversity and multivocality. Moreover, while I regard the early modern non-European
polities as states, I explicitly note the differences between them and our Westphalian
understanding of states as sovereign, territorially discrete units with no overlapping
juridical authority. For the continued impact of essentialism in, for example, security
studies, see Barkawi and Laffey 2006.
Manning argues that postmodernists who share a postcolonial perspective tend to
eschew the concept of culture altogether. He suggests the field is bifurcated into
historians who see culture as synonymous with society and those who see it as
a process of interaction that is constantly changing. Manning 1996, 779.
Chakrabarty 2000.
Collective Beliefs and Visions of Order
71
For example, Peter van der Veer has provided a trenchant critique of
what he calls “wholism.” Although associating himself with Geertz’s
approach he argues that:
What has to be curbed is the quite understandable desire to say something general
about, say, religion as a universal entity (as a “cultural system”) or about
a particular society’s religion in general (as in “The religion of Java”) or about
the general and thus comparable features of a world religion’s manifestations in
different societies (“Islam observed”).147
Instead he advocates a fragmentary approach that focuses on aggregation
from micro-level experiences to a broader pattern – if such exists.
However, his fragmentary approach is not fully persuasive and the
distinction with the wholism of the social sciences, which he derides, is
not entirely clear. Why would not an anthropological approach that
aggregates from multiple micro-level analyses, in order to distinguish
a broader pattern, conclude that a certain culture or religion predominated in a given area? Why should not an anthropologist who studied
family relations across Vietnam, Korea, and China, not conclude that
Confucianism played a key role in East Asia? Indeed, van der Veer himself
speaks of “cultural worlds” that suggest a higher level of generalization
than he cares to admit.148 More fundamentally, a fragmentary approach
would downplay how institutions and social fields routinize and reproduce individual beliefs, and thereby constitute durable collective
identities.
It will not do to simply refer to all descriptions of collective beliefs
beyond the individual level as essentialist. From the extreme micro-level
perspective, every expression of agency destabilizes collective belief systems. For example, following van der Veer’s view that one should not
speak of a society’s religion, a nonessentialist perspective would emphasize the myriad forms and expressions of Christianity at the level of
individual beliefs. And indeed, from its infancy, the religion has been
contested, interpreted, and challenged in countless ways. One person’s
doctrine is another’s heresy.
Nevertheless, it is still possible to argue that with all its variations,
Christianity has constituted a coherent set of beliefs at the macro level
that has motivated action. Can one, for example, really explain the
Crusades without reference to Christianity?149 Moreover, European
147
149
Van der Veer 2013, 2–3. 148 Van der Veer 2013, 3–4.
Hall and Kratochwil are clear on the matter. “True, the crusaders believed that going to
the Holy Land and bringing back some relics and booty was in their self-interest, but
without a clearer articulation what this ‘self’ is, explaining politics in terms of a naturalist
account is either tautological or uninteresting.” Hall and Kratochwil 1993, 489.
Alkopher argues the same point. Following the Annales’ analysis of medieval Europe,
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Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
polities have derived their self-identity partially by religious terms, in the
past as well as the present. As discussion of Hedley’s Bull’s work indicated, European polities saw international society as coterminous with
the presence of Christian values.150 More generally, whether one can
analytically aggregate individual beliefs as a coherent system of collective
beliefs depends on the intersubjective understanding of the actors themselves. Whether a particular categorization of collective beliefs is warranted will depend on the mechanisms – institutions, narratives, rituals –
through which such beliefs are made manifest. But that amounts to
a question of observation and interpretation. In short, I submit there is
no a priori reason to avoid examining the implications of collective belief
systems as we find in religions or philosophical codes of conduct, such as
Confucianism, particularly as they are produced and reproduced by
institutions, practices, government, arts, rituals, architecture, and so on.
Second, ascribing ideational motives to non-European societies –
whether based on religion, cosmology, or other collective beliefs – does
not per se amount to the ascription of irrationality. Obeyesekere’s vociferous criticism of Sahlins provides an example of such a claim.
Obeyesekere challenged Sahlins’s account of Cook’s demise at the
hands of Hawaiians as having depicted them as childish and irrational
savages. Instead, he argued that the Hawaiians were strategic calculating
individuals, no different from Cook or ourselves.151
But this misses the point. Less relevant than the question “who got the
Cook narrative right?” is the issue of how rational action is to be understood. For Sahlins, rational action had to be understood within the
symbolic context of the protagonists. “Different cultures, different rationalities,” as both Sahlins and Winch would argue. Obeyesekere, by contrast, embraced the methodological individualism and utilitarianism that
Sahlins criticized in Western anthropology.152 Sahlins objected to the
150
151
152
she suggests that Christian medieval society had structures of knowledge and contained
a worldview that was perceived as axiomatic. The Crusades must be understood against
the backdrop of this Christian ecumene. Osiander as well has argued for the relevance of
medieval mode of thinking in which the idea of a Christian commonwealth could
accommodate diversity in practice. Osiander 2001, 127. On the relevance for political
thought of the universal community of Christendom, also see Osiander 2007.
Contemporary politics remain influenced by such views, as the Guardian noted with
regard to the draft of the EU constitution: “The controversial question of Christianity
returned to the EU yesterday when seven states, led by Italy, urged the union to
recognise a ‘historical truth’ and refer explicitly to the ‘Christian roots of Europe’ in
its new constitution.” Ian Black, Guardian, May 25, 2004, accessed at www
.theguardian.com.
Geertz 2000, 103.
As Borofsky argues, the debate thus also revolved around the issue of who could speak
for whom. Borofsky 1997, 263.
Collective Beliefs and Visions of Order
73
study of culture in which “culture is taken as an environment or means at
the disposition of the ‘manipulating individual’ . . . culture is the epiphenomenon of their intentions.”153
It should also be clear from the previous discussion of Gadamer that
I situate The World Imagined within the historical context of which all
modern scholarship is part. Geertz’s recognition that “we make of them
what we can, given who we are or have become,” fully resonates with the
critical hermeneutic stance.154 While neither Western or non-Western
scholars (if those terms still have meaning) can escape the historical
experience of which they are part, the fusion of horizons that comes
with examining distinct and early modern societies leads to questioning
the basis of one’s own judgments. In this sense, this book is eminently
compatible with the spirit of postcolonial studies.
I seek to avoid essentialist pitfalls by several other methods. First,
although I regard collective belief systems as relatively stable organizing
principles that undergird international societies, this does not imply a lack
of variation over time. For example, while demonstrating the importance
of Brahmanic and Buddhist influences throughout Southeast Asia
(Indianized Southeast Asia, as George Coedès argued), I draw attention
to the influences of Islam, which arrived from the fifteenth century
onward, even if it arguably had a limited effect on the mainland.155
Moreover, as the empirical discussions show, none of these societies
remained static or without agency in the face of Western external pressures. They instead creatively adapted to such pressures, sometimes turning them into advantage, as Meiji Japan attempted to do in adopting
a colonial policy of its own.
Second, variation occurred synchronically across polities within a given
international society. Thus Islam affected the Indonesian archipelago to
greater extent than mainland Southeast Asia where Theravada Buddhism
held sway. Similarly, I show that while we can still place the Ottomans,
Safavids, and Mughals within an Islamic cultural frame, each of these
empires articulated significant variations.
Third, the discussion of collective beliefs clearly shows that cultural
frames are rarely exclusive or closed. While we can still regard Islamic
beliefs as providing a degree of shared intersubjective understanding
153
154
Sahlins 1976, 102. Steven Lukes, while criticizing Sahlins as a radical relativist, nevertheless concurs that Obeyesekere’s attempt to maximize cross-cultural agreement and
similarities was flawed. Lukes 2000. Even more oddly, Obeyesekere, as a Sri Lankan,
seemed to take the position of an injured “native subject.” Geertz 2000, 106. Yet he
engaged in the type of cultural analysis that is so objectionable to postcolonial and
subaltern studies.
Geertz 2000, 105. 155 Coedès 1975.
Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
74
across the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires, it is clear that TurcoMongol influences also played a role throughout the Islamic world.
Overall this book will show considerable heterogeneity and flexibility in
the cultures that permeated the Chinese tributary system, the HinduBuddhist empires of Southeast Asia and the Islamic world.
One of my central arguments is that within shared collective beliefs
systems, actors could mediate and manipulate roles, positions, and
understandings, but could do so within the same belief system. The
homogeneity that the nation-state and modernity require, by contrast,
left little room for the flexibility and heterogeneity of the international
societies that are the objects of this study.
The account that emerges thus shows considerable affinity with some
postcolonial studies.156 For one, it demonstrates that “West” and “nonWest” was not a natural antinomy, but a creation of the Eurocentric
mind-set and institutions from the early nineteenth century on. Rather
than a European identity unidirectionally imposing itself on a passive
non-Western world, that European identity itself was forged in the
encounter with those societies.
3.6
The World beyond Europe: Three Non-Westphalian
International Societies
The following chapters cover three international systems, three international societies that existed coterminously with the emerging European
system of territorial states. The following two chapters discuss the East
Asian tributary system with the Chinese Empire claiming a central role.
I then turn to discussing three key Islamic empires and argue that they
shared common norms and principles such that we can speak of an
Islamic international society. Finally, I turn to Southeast Asia and argue
that although the polities of that region were never fully integrated under
a dominant religious system or dominant polity, they constituted a region
with shared collective beliefs.
Several reasons informed the choice to study these cases. First, they
demonstrate alternative logics of organization that differed significantly
from the Westphalian model. In this sense, they challenge conventional
156
I see my work as quite compatible in spirit with Blaney and Inayatullah’s critique that the
study of difference has too often been the expression of superiority and inferiority
(certainly in the past) or the expression of sameness. My analysis makes neither of
those assertions. See Blaney and Inayatullah 1994, 28. More broadly, I take their
claim to heart that international relations should emphasize the study of differences
without suggesting a trend toward some liberal or cosmopolitan universalism.
Inayatullah and Blaney, 2004.
Collective Beliefs and Visions of Order
75
understandings of international relations scholarship, focused as it is on
sovereign, territorial states and international anarchy.157
The polities in these three international systems resembled each other
in one important aspect: the polities in all these systems claimed universal
authority. In the Islamic world, the rulers of the three dominant empires –
the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal (Timurid) – all justified their rule on
the basis of religion and historical precedent. They were vice-regents of
God and heirs to Alexander the Great, Chingiss Khan, and Timur. The
Ming and Qing dynasties of China followed in the long tradition that
posited their realm at the center of world, and gathered “all under heaven.” The Southeast Asian polities were “galactic empires.” Imperial rule
radiated out from the center bringing order to chaos, light to darkness.
Their rulers were Chakravartin, universal monarchs, each a king of kings.
Despite such legitimation, material reality imposed limits to their
actual domains. All such rulers thus had to reconcile ideological frames
with the physical limits to their authority. All these polities also found
ways to establish relations with other polities, even if the latter made
similar legitimation claims. They were part of regional international
societies where shared cultural frameworks informed how the political
and social world should be structured. While claiming universal authority
these polities were not self-contained empires, but rather constituted
elements of a wider international system and society.
Accordingly, the logic of organization of these international societies
differed significantly from the European state system that gradually
emerged from the late medieval period through the nineteenth
century.158 Two key features set Europe apart from other regions. First,
European rulers agreed to define their authority spatially, by the control
over fixed territories. Mutually recognized borders came to define the
spatial extension of authority. Second, rulers were sovereign in their
lands. No higher authority existed. “Rex est imperator in regno suo,”
the king is emperor in his own realm. These two features alone should
already suggest how different universalist claims were to the principles of
the Westphalian system. Studying regional systems that operate along
quite different principles thus illuminates different modes of structuring
international order.
The second major reason to study these regional systems is that it
allows us to examine how polities within these systems created stable
157
158
As Eric Wolf noted in a seminal study, “the habit of treating named entities as Iroquois,
Greece, Persia, or the United States as fixed entities, opposed to one another by stable
internal architecture and external boundaries interferes with our ability to understand
their mutual encounter and confrontation.” Wolf 1982, 7.
See, e.g., Badie and Birnbaum 1983; Spruyt 1994; Tilly 1975.
76
Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
patterns of interaction that were not simply reducible to particular distributions of material power. The study of the Chinese regional order, the
Islamic World, and Southeast Asian polities allows us to evaluate the
impact of collective belief systems in different material settings.
Contrary to hegemonic stability theory, norms and principles emerged
in the Islamic World and Southeast Asia despite the lack of a single
dominant power, and in absence of any explicit agreement among the
major powers.159
For example, as John King Fairbank convincingly demonstrated, the
Chinese imperial order hinged on a performative set of relations in which
the tributary states engaged in ritual submission to the emperor in
exchange for trading privileges and political legitimation of their rule.
Scholars, such as David Kang, have more recently argued that this system
was based on the recognized cultural supremacy of China, rather than on
material power. This order was remarkably peaceful when compared to
Europe, with few wars occurring between East Asian polities.160
However, focusing exclusively on the East Asian tributary system does
not allow one to isolate the key causes of the interstate peace in East Asia.
Those polities that formed the inner core of this tributary system – Korea,
Vietnam, and to lesser extent, Japan – were arguably also weaker than the
Chinese imperial dynasties. Thus, even if one recognizes the importance
of shared collective beliefs in facilitating this international society, one
cannot isolate these beliefs as the most important factor.161
The other regional systems of this study thus provide added analytic
value since they allow one to isolate the impact of collective beliefs as a key
factor. The Islamic World was never politically united. By the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires
straddled the region from Eastern Europe to India. Other polities were
quite formidable in their own right, such as the Uzbeks, and on occasion
challenged these three. In other words, the region lacked a hegemonic
power that dominated the Islamic world, even if the Ottomans and the
Mughals were arguably the most powerful among these empires.
Nevertheless, despite the absence of a hegemonically inspired regional
order, the Islamic world constituted an international society. Collective
beliefs and collective visions regarding how order should be constructed
and what constituted legitimate authority united the Islamic world in
various ways. The webs of significance that united this world were partly
religious in nature – evinced particularly in the importance of sacred,
159
160
In this sense, one might interpret the argument as a loosely structured method of
difference test. Lijphart 1971, 682–93.
Kang 2010a, 83. 161 I discuss this more fully in Spruyt 2017a.
Collective Beliefs and Visions of Order
77
revealed law, the Shari’a – but also derived from shared historical narratives and common foundational mythology.162 Authority throughout the
Islamic world was made manifest by shared rituals, recurrent architectural motifs, and collective standards of civilization.
Southeast Asia provides perhaps the most telling evidence of the
impact of collective beliefs systems. This region, too, was never politically united, and, indeed, lacked any dominant polity, even though there
were numerous powerful kingdoms over the centuries. Nor were they
braided by a monotheistic religion, although Islam started to make
inroads from the late fifteenth century. Nevertheless, one can describe
this region as having a cultural unity. Most of all Brahmanic and
Buddhist elements influenced the political organization of polities
throughout the region, and arguably influence politics in this region
today.163
The polities of the Southeast Asian region provide us (in a loose sense)
with a most distinct case design. Of all these systems it presents the greatest
lack of hegemonic order and yet it shared collective visions by means of
which polities were ordered, and by means of which their communities
were defined in distinction from others outside the region.164
A third reason for choosing these regions is that such an examination
allows us to assess whether non-Westphalian systems were indeed irreconcilable with the sovereign, territorial state system, and whether these polities were unable to adjust to Western principles of international relations –
arguments that are often presented as reasons for their ultimate demise.
Among the wide variety of non-Westphalian polities and international
societies, I have chosen to focus on these three international societies of the
early modern period because they in particular confronted the European
colonial powers on near equal or (earlier) even on superior terms.165
Whereas Europeans increasingly could assert themselves by force of arms
and forceful imposition in the Americas and Africa, this was not the case in
the Middle East and Asia. There, Europeans were forced to interact as
equals or even inferiors, until they could start to assert themselves by the
later eighteenth century.166 In this sense, exploring the interaction between
the European Westphalian view of international society and these nonEuropean orders shows how that interaction proceeded dialectically. More
162
163
164
165
166
On the importance of Shari’a as defining what Islam entailed, see Stewart 2013.
See for this argument particularly Stanley Tambiah and Oliver Wolters. Tambiah 1976;
Wolters 1999.
Eckstein describes this type of case study as Configurative Idiographic. Eckstein 1975.
For a wide-ranging overview of non-European polities and societies, see, e.g., Ferguson
and Mansbach 1996.
As Sharman notes, Europeans were decidedly second best for centuries after they first
emerged in the Orient. Sharman 2019.
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Beyond the Westphalian Gaze
specifically, we can examine how European states came to define themselves in opposition to the non-European Other, and created imagined
homogenous European nations in the process.
This book covers the Eurasian universalist empires and international
societies of the early modern period, straddling the point when European
powers started to exert their global reach at the end of the fifteenth century.
It is then that the Iberian maritime voyages made contact with the
Americas, rounded the Cape of Good Hope to enter the Indian Ocean,
and circumnavigated the globe.167 I end with the late nineteenth century,
when European self-identity cast itself as the civilized superior actor to the
inferior non-European Other, thereby articulating and justifying colonial
expansion and formal empire.
Classifying these systems as early modern invites a multiplicity of
theoretical perspectives.168 With the term “early modern” I merely wish
to capture a process of transition – a transition that took several centuries
to complete. I take two features of the early modern period as significant
for my analysis. First, prior to the European maritime voyages we might
speak of various international systems, but not of a global system. There
were undoubtedly extensive trading networks across Eurasia, and the
famous voyages of Chinese admiral Cheng Ho of the early fifteenth
century predated the Portuguese and Spanish. But the latter started
these international systems on a path to increasing interaction, and tied
their fates to each other. The international system today is beyond a doubt
a global one, as the voluminous literature on globalization can attest.
Second, as this period of transition commenced, polities were arguably
capstone polities. While they possessed significant material capabilities,
they lacked the infrastructural and administrative capacities of the later
industrialized European nation-states of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. As a consequence, these polities had the ability to “run wide
but not deep.” Their ability to deeply affect local communities was
limited.169 Consequently, these early modern polities evinced considerable
167
168
169
See Scammel 1981.
For Marx the relevant distinction revolved around the differentiation of feudal modes of
production and capitalism. Durkheim viewed the transformation from mechanical to
organic solidarity as the most relevant issue. Tönnies in turn stressed the transition from
community to society (Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft). For Weber, modernity heralded the
dominance of rationality over traditional or charismatic authority. The transformation
of early modern to modern can thus be understood in material terms, whether economic
or technological, as well as a change in the collective beliefs by means of which people
understood their world and organized their polities.
I follow Gellner and Crone as seeing industrialization of Europe as a key transitional
moment. Crone 1989. On the ability of the nation-state to reach deep into society
compared to capstone governments, see particularly Giddens 1987.
Collective Beliefs and Visions of Order
79
heterogeneity, which required rulers to find flexible means to integrate
multiethnic and multinational communities.
Modernity, by contrast, has allowed polities to reach deep into their
respective societies to monitor, control, and mobilize.170 Indeed, modernity has led to the desire to normalize polities along the Western model.
The Westphalian model, now combined with the ideal in which the
nation and state are fused, has become the norm, in disregard of the
flexibility and heterogeneity that early modern international societies
managed to accommodate.171 The earlier collective belief systems,
replete with performative scripts that could accommodate deviation and
variation, increasingly became irreconcilable with the normation and
homogenization demanded by the nation-state.
170
171
As William Connolly suggested, modernity might be described as the period “in which
the insistence upon taking charge of the world comes into its own.” Cited in Alker
1992, 358.
As the following chapters show, normalization and normation occurred as the Europe
colonial powers asserted increasing formal and informal control across Eurasia and
beyond. For the concepts of normalization and normation. See Foucault 2009.
Part II
The East Asian Sino-centric Order
4
Gathering All under Heaven
East Asian Collective Beliefs and International Society
When one rules by means of virtue it is like the North Star – it dwells in
its place and the other stars pay reverence to it.
Confucius, Analects 2.1.
The skillful construction and manipulation of relations with neighbors
abroad can be molded into a language which transcends and transforms
reality into a mechanism for the maintenance of some desired world
view.
Ronald Toby1
4.1
Introduction
The current resurgence of Asian powers, and particularly that of China,
has led policy makers and scholars alike to reflect on the stability of the
current international system. As discussed in Chapter 2, a large body of
scholarship in political science suggests that such stability ultimately
hinges on the distribution of relative power. Consequently, shifts in
relative power will correlate with instability, even war.
The ascendance of China’s military and economic power has interjected intense policy relevance into these scholarly debates on the sources
of international order. If realists are right about the recurrence of hegemonic wars at moments of relative power shifts, then the future looks
bleak. John Mearsheimer is unequivocal. “Can China rise peacefully? My
answer is no.”2 Whether or not this is the case has sparked intense
scrutiny. The realist view demands internal balancing by the United
States and other Asian states as well as allied counterbalancing.3
Even if conflict might be avoided, hegemonic stability theorists still expect
turbulence and challenges ahead to the liberal economic system. Will China
1
2
3
Toby’s remarks regarding the Tokugawa Shogunate are equally apposite for the East
Asian regional order more broadly.
Mearsheimer 2006, 160.
These discussions are already decades old but have received renewed vigor. See, e.g.,
Friedberg 1993–94; Christensen 2006; Johnston 2016–17; Rosecrance and Miller 2015.
83
84
The East Asian Sino-centric Order
be a free rider and, as the United States in the 1930s, pass on the responsibility to co-lead the system? Or will it act together with the other leading
states to maintain the liberal economic order of the postwar period?4
By contrast, others have been quick to point out that the international
system continues to benefit many states besides the United States and its
immediate allies. Indeed, arguably modern economic interdependence
has diminished the incentives for conflict. By facilitating liberal trade and
financial stability, particularly in the decades following the Bretton
Woods accord, the United States has also aided export-led growth in
Asia.5 China has much to gain from the current system. And if arguments
about the US constitutional order hold, there might even be a general
sense that the values underlying the liberal international system are
broadly shared.6
These explanations and correlated expectations of how international
order is created and transformed have one aspect in common: they rely on
a view of international relations in which states vie for material gains and
pursue these by strategic utilitarian calculations. The possibility of material gains, military as well as economic, informs state objectives. The
relative distribution of power in turn determines the particular character
of the international order. A hegemonic actor or a combination of Great
Powers will institutionalize norms and principles to further their interests.
Historical examination of East Asia, however, questions some of these
underlying assumptions, and suggests alternative bases of international
order. Some scholars of the Chinese tributary system have thus argued
that China stood at the center of an East Asian system because it was
widely recognized as the center of civilization, not because of its material
capabilities. This Sino-centric order persisted for centuries, even millennia by some accounts, without the frequent wars that characterized
Europe. As David Kang points out, the lack of frequent interstate conflict
between Korea, China, Japan, and Vietnam for most of the Ming (1368–
1644) and Qing (1644–1912) dynasties presents an empirical puzzle.7
4
5
6
7
Political accusations that China has been a free rider are not difficult to find. For remarks
by the EU trade commissioner, see “China Cannot Be a Free-Rider on Trade,” BBC
News, May 20, 2013. Accessed at www.bbc.com/news. President Obama similarly
accused China of being a free rider. “Obama on the World,” New York Times, August 8,
2014, accessed at www.nytimes.com.
On the Neoliberal view of international affairs, see Keohane and Nye 1977; Oneal and
Russett 1997. Rosecrance suggests that mercantilist practices have largely been relegated
to the past. See Rosecrance 1986.
For a relatively optimistic assessment, see, e.g., Ikenberry 2008.
Kang 2010a. The locus classicus for the analysis of the Sino-centric tributary system
remains Fairbank’s work. See Fairbank and Têng 1941; Fairbank 1942; Fairbank and
Chên 1968.
Gathering All under Heaven
85
In this sense the Chinese tributary system challenges Realist and
Liberal Views. Cultural hegemony and shared collective imagination,
rather than military or economic dominance, might create the conditions
for peace and stability. For that reason alone, a closer examination of the
tributary system is warranted.
I argue that studying East Asia, and the tributary system more specifically, reveals different modulations of hierarchy, and different modes of
structuring interstate relations.8 At certain times, some polities that interacted with China recognized Chinese imperial dynasties as bearers of the
heavenly mandate, thus conforming to views that the recognition of
cultural supremacy conveyed hierarchy and order.9 Regional order was
informed by shared cultural perspectives rather than simply the reflection
of the distribution of power.
China’s relations with its neighbors, and politics in Central and
East Asia, hinged on shared collective beliefs throughout the region.
This shared cognitive script informed how authority was legitimated,
how interpolity relations should be conducted, and how the interiority and exteriority of the political community were defined. Who
constituted the “Other”? Who was part of one’s own community?
Throughout the East Asian sphere common tropes were circulated
and recirculated.
Participation in the tributary system signaled a shared understanding
and acceptance of the existing international order that placed the Chinese
dynasties at the center. This did not mean an absence of violence in the
region. Conflicts between sedentary and nomadic peoples were common,
as were internal rebellions and uprisings. However, the collective understanding of the norms and principles that informed this system made
interstate war relatively scarce. Engaging in tribute provided a means of
gaining mutual legitimation vis-à-vis other states, but particularly served
rulers in acquiring internal legitimacy.10 It also served as a means of
engaging in favorable terms of trade, which in most cases benefited the
tributary more than the tributee.
8
9
10
I use the term “interstate” to designate the relations between relatively autonomous
independent polities. I do not suggest that these polities had all the characteristics of a
modern Weberian state. Similarly, Evelyn Rawski speaks of a “multistate framework”
and a “multistate geopolitical system.” Rawski 2015, 5, 7, 15.
The concept of the “Mandate from Heaven” emerged during the Western Zhou dynasty
(1045–770 BCE) in a succession struggle. One of the contenders asked for divination to
see if he might prevail in the civil war. Following auspicious divination, he attacked his
rivals and became King Cheng, and he was deemed to have received the “Mandate from
Heaven.” El Amine 2015, 17.
On the benefits of mutual legitimation, particularly see Lee 2017. See also Yang 2011,
291–92.
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The East Asian Sino-centric Order
Beyond examining the particular modulations between hierarchy and
anarchy, examining the East Asian sphere also yields insights into how
exteriority and interiority were constructed. The Westphalian system that
originated in Europe differentiated polities by spatial parameters. “Inside”
was defined by one’s geographic location within borders. “Outside” constituted the community beyond the juridical authority of the sovereign. The
Chinese view that the emperor ruled to govern all – the concept of Tianxia,
all under heaven – constituted a very different logic of organization, even if
the Chinese imperial dynasties de facto had to recognize geographic limits
to their realm.
Despite the claim to rule all under heaven, the Chinese Empire hardly
constituted a self-contained world system. The iconic silk route was but
one of many far-flung trade networks that integrated China and the other
East Asian polities with Central Asia and beyond. Large volumes of goods
flowed outside official imperial channels. In addition to trade, ideas and
collective beliefs flowed across boundaries. For all the importance attributed to Confucian philosophy, East Asia, as all polities across Eurasia,
was subject to synergistic braiding of multiple cognitive frames. Cultural
influences crossed porous frontier zones regardless of imperial policies.
“China’s borders were not fixed in the modern sense, but were much
more fluid sites where different peoples commingled.”11
Indeed, as we will see, the very notion of what constituted “China” was
flexible. Today, we equate China as the specific territory of the People’s
Republic (PRC), with mutually recognized borders and a population
dominated by ethnic Han Chinese. Thus, to remain with contemporary
connotations, I, too, will refer to “China” to denote the dynasties – Han as
well as non-Han – who controlled the Central Plain (zhongyuan).
However, for much of its history this territory was itself incorporated
into multiethnic empires that hailed from the north and northeast. The
Liao (907–1125), Jin (1115–1234), Yuan (1271–1368), and the
Manchu/Qing dynasties (1644–1912) were not ruled by Han Chinese.
The idea of a uniform Sinicized polity was a product of nineteenthcentury nationalism.12 In such multiethnic empires, identity was flexible,
and rulers justified their authority by multiple means.
This chapter first clarifies the cultural framework that informed the
East Asian regional order. How did this cultural frame inform and support a hierarchical political system? I subsequently turn to demonstrate
how this collective imagination manifested itself. How did rituals,
11
12
Rawski 2015, 21. She also notes that the expansion of maritime trade from the sixteenth
century on could not be controlled within tributary trade. Rawski 2015, 228.
See Rawski’s discussion in Rawski 1996, 841–42. See also Rawski 2015, 1–2.
Gathering All under Heaven
87
symbols, and architecture represent and embody this order in everyday
life as well as in political actions? As Evelyn Rawski observes, such
standardized and repetitive rituals “shape our perception of reality and
the world.”13
The final sections suggest that the Chinese imperial system of tributary
relations demonstrated a remarkable flexibility in how it could be
deployed both within the empire and between East Asian polities.
Indeed, the very character of the empire itself could be interpreted in
multiple ways. The emperor could be many things to many people.
My key point is that tributary relations were part of a cognitive frame
through which the social and political world was understood, as well as an
articulation of how politics and interstate relations should be conducted.
Tributary relations articulated what the ontology of the interstate system
was and what it should be.
Scholars have rightly criticized approaches that frame the tributary
system as entirely Sino-centric, similar to a hub-and-spoke pattern in
which China was acknowledged by all peripheral actors at all times as
the superior. As critics point out, some of the supplicant states who paid
tribute to the Chinese emperors simultaneously operated tributary systems of their own. Others broke away from the Sino-centric order.
Multiple overlapping and crosscutting networks coexisted. Moreover,
the rank order of subservient and superior could at times be inverted
with “barbarian” polities replacing the incumbent Chinese dynasty.
Consequently, the tributary system should not be understood as a
singular hegemonic system in which all the participants unequivocally
recognized China’s supremacy. It did not constitute a unidirectional
relationship. Instead, tributary relations provided the cognitive framework through which multiple actions could be interpreted and made to fit
different contexts. Tributary relations contained the notion of rank and
hierarchy but also allowed for inversion of rank; there were diverse interpretations of who was entitled to claim civilizational superiority and of
who might claim to constitute the center of the civilization. The relations
conferred mutual benefits in terms of legitimation and trade opportunities. Critically, due to the many variations in how tributary relations
could be altered and managed, they made interstate war relatively infrequent. In the next chapter, I will discuss whether the Chinese Empire and
the tributary framework were compatible with the Westphalian state
system. Common wisdom holds that the idea of universal empire is
fundamentally incompatible with the Westphalian logic of organizing
13
Rawski 2015, 105.
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The East Asian Sino-centric Order
interstate relations. A stagnant and resistant Qing dynasty thus had to give
way to the European powers and the United States.14
By contrast, I will argue that the tension between the two systems had
less to do with the unwillingness and inability of the Chinese Empire to
adjust and more to do with two other dynamics. First, and most importantly, the West, by a perverse logic, benefited from categorizing the East
Asian international society as incompatible with the Westphalian system.
By creating an incompatible and backward “Other,” the West could
justify its own colonial ambitions and define itself as the standard of the
civilization.15 Second, the nationalist dynamic that came with modernity
and state mobilization stood in tension with the multivocality and multiethnic accommodation that had marked earlier periods. Competition
with the European nation-state required the East Asian polities to transform their previous logic of organization.
As I will discuss in the next chapter, such reflections on the early
modern history of the region have resurfaced in contemporary politics.
Historical interpretations inform how the respective populations view
each other’s legacies. Politicians and scholars are deploying preferred
historical narratives to advance specific objectives. Particular readings of
early modern Asian history thus intertwine and inform actions and decisions today.
4.2
Cultural Premises of Political Hierarchy
4.2.1
The Chinese Tributary System and Interstate Peace
John King Fairbank’s discussion of the Chinese tributary system should
be considered the founding work in western scholarship on the topic.
Now more than eighty years ago, Fairbank and his coauthor, Têng Ssuyü, described the tributary system as a “scheme of things entire.”16
Fairbank viewed the tributary system as the result of Chinese cultural
preeminence, serving the purposes of self-defense, regulation of commerce, and of the conduct of diplomacy and international relations.
The crux of the tributary system was less the exercise of military force
and the economic power of the Chinese dynasties than a shared cultural
14
15
16
“China first consented to a regular diplomatic dialogue and exchanges of envoys [with
other states …] when European powers, with superior military and maritime technology
[…] progressively involved her in international politics.” Adam Watson as quoted in
Sverdrup-Thygeson 2012, 248.
On the creation of self-identity in juxtaposition to the alien other, see Neumann and
Welsh 1991.
Fairbank and Têng 1941, 137.
Gathering All under Heaven
89
framework. The system was explicitly hierarchical, with the emperor at
the apex of a cultural system. Those willing to follow Confucian precepts,
recognize Chinese superiority via ritual submission, and adopt the
Chinese language and calendar could in turn be recognized as civilized.17
“Throughout East Asia even fiercely independent neighboring countries
such as Korea, Japan, and Vietnam all adopted Chinese models of state
organization and foreign relations, ideographic literacy, cuisine, clothes
and calendars.”18 As James Anderson notes, the ordering of time and
calendar in itself constitutes a form of power.19 By giving structure to time
and ordering geographic space, the emperor gave order to chaos. In
contrast, the nomadic pastoral people adamantly rejected these markers
of Chinese civilization.
Rulers of submissive polities received the imprimatur from the
emperor. Fairbank’s view of the relationship between China and other
powers is worth quoting at length. It defines not only his views, consisting
of several key propositions, but the large body of scholarship that has
emerged since then on this topic.
First, that Chinese superiority over the barbarians had a cultural rather than a
mere political basis; it rested less upon force than upon the Chinese way of life
embodied in such things as the Confucian code of conduct and the use of the
Chinese written language … Secondly, that those barbarians who wished to
“come and be transformed” … must recognize the supreme position of the
emperor; for the Son of Heaven represented all mankind.20
Here one sees concisely the critical assumptions that underlie the
scholarship that argues that such a tributary system defined China’s
policies with its neighbors for centuries, and indeed, perhaps for the last
two millennia. The Chinese imperial dynasties claimed divine legitimation of their authority, which was theirs and theirs alone. This authority
emanated from immanent validation, not from the display or possession
of material power. Other polities, no matter how powerful, were culturally
inferior. Such polities could be transformed if they voluntarily submitted
to the emperor, in recognition of their inferiority. The system was thus
clearly hierarchical, universal, inherently unequal, and not dependent on
the actual military or economic power of the empire.21
As Fairbank describes, the supremacy of the emperor was ritualistically
acknowledged by foreign envoys that performed the kowtow, three
17
18
19
21
Following Confucian precepts entailed the acceptance of the traditional Confucian
canon contained in the works of Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi. El Amine 2015, 22–25.
Barfield 1989, 2. On the importance of ritual and performance, see Cynthia Weber 1998.
J. Anderson 2013, 277. 20 Fairbank and Têng 1941, 137–38.
See also Yang 2011, 290–99.
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The East Asian Sino-centric Order
kneelings and the nine knockings of the head on the ground, or nine
prostrations. Tributary states also committed themselves to not receive
envoys from states outside the system.22 In exchange for ritual submission, the emperor would grant trade concessions to the envoys that
usually outdid the envoys’ gifts.
While Fairbank’s work placed emphasis on the Ming dynasty (1368–
1644) and the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912), the practices of these dynasties, or at least very similar rituals, were deemed to have been performed
for millennia. Documents from the Qing dynasty refer to similar practices
dating back to the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE). Some scholars date
the idea of regularized tribute even further back, to the Zhou (1046–256
BCE) dynasty, which lasted for almost a millennium before the Han.
Contemporary scholarship in the social sciences and historical studies
has returned to examining China’s relations with its neighboring states,
and this in turn has sparked renewed interest in policy circles. Most
notably, David Kang has extended the discussion of the tributary system
and interjected it squarely within the debates regarding the sources of
international order. His argument closely tracks that of Fairbank by
noting that the Sino-centric order was premised on the mutual recognition of a shared cultural order with China at the apex. Due to this mutual
recognition, the East Asian system showed a remarkable absence of major
power conflict. Compared to war-prone Europe, the Chinese tributary
system diverged sharply.
In fact, from 1368 to 1841 – from the founding of the Ming dynasty to the Opium
wars between Britain and China – there were only two wars between China,
Korea, Vietnam, and Japan: China’s invasion of Vietnam (1407–1428) and
Japan’s invasion of Korea (1592–1598).23
Shared Confucian philosophy and principles formed the basis of this
regional international order. Although Buddhism influenced the region
as well, it was amended to fit a Confucian orientation. As Gilbert Rozman
argued, “Throughout the region there is general awareness of the common Chinese roots of much of each country’s tradition and of the
Confucian core in borrowings from China.”24
Those states that were particularly influenced by Confucian philosophy –
Vietnam, Korea, and Japan – formed the core of the system.25 They
22
23
24
25
Rawski 2015, 47. That edict, however, was not always fully obeyed.
Kang 2010a, 2. He notes six major wars between 1368 and 1841, of which only two are
classified as wars between Sinicized states (table 5.1, 83).
Rozman 1981, 7.
Yuanchong Wang 2018, 4–12, describes the arrangement as the zongfan system. Zong
referred to the lineage of the emperor, the Son of Heaven. Fan traditionally referred to the
members of the royal clan who controlled the periphery of the empire. Hence, political
Gathering All under Heaven
91
recognized China as the apex of a political and cultural hierarchy, and
reinforced this hierarchy through ritualistic submission in the form of
tributary missions to the emperor.26 In exchange, the Chinese emperor
granted legitimacy to the submissive rulers of the tributary states.27
Polities outside this Confucian-inspired order, the nomadic and seminomadic polities to China’s north and west, were not part of the system.
Due to the absence of shared norms and beliefs, war was far more
common. Kang explicitly notes that his claim of East Asian stability
does not imply that violence was rare. “There was plenty of violence,
but it tended to occur between China and the semi-nomadic peoples on
its northern and western borders, not between China and the other
Sinicized states.”28 However, he still suggests that, “even political units
that rejected Confucian notions of cultural achievement – such as the
nomads – accepted the larger rules of the game, the way hierarchy was
defined.”29
Kang advances a critically important claim. The reason for this absence
of conflict was not due to Chinese material superiority. “Goals, beliefs
and national identities of East Asian states were more important to
explaining their relations than was the balance of power or their level of
economic interdependence.”30 Contra Realism and Neoliberalism, he
argues that a shared cultural framework and shared beliefs and norms
can mitigate state insecurity. Simply put, East Asian politics under the
tributary system clarify “the distinction between an international system
based only on material power and an international society based on
culture.”31
Kang is far from alone in advancing this perspective of the tributary
system. Yuen Foon Khong argues that the tributary system created four
centuries of interstate peace: “most in East Asia accepted, or at least did
not contest, China’s civilizational greatness. The Sinicized states voluntarily gave China what it wanted – acknowledgement of its hegemonic
status and recognition of its civilization-based superiority.”32 Erik
Ringmar also views the tributary system as a culturally inspired order
26
27
28
31
32
order implied a family related hierarchy, with mutual obligations, and at the same
connoted geographical distance. Over time this came to denote the relation between
distinct polities of center and inner fan (directly controlled by the center) and various
degrees of outer fan, some closely related, such as Chosŏ n Korea, and some further
removed.
Kang 2010a, 8. Chapter 3 discusses this in detail.
See, e.g., Lam 1989, 165–79; Fairbank and Têng 1941, 170.
Kang 2010a, 2, 10; and Chapter 7. 29 Kang 2010a, 8. 30 Kang 2010a, xi.
Kang 2010a, 11. Kang refers to the absence of war in the region as the “Longer Peace,” a
play on the term the “Long Peace” that has been used to describe the absence of war
between the Great Powers since 1945. See Gaddis 1986, 99–142.
Khong 2013, 14.
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The East Asian Sino-centric Order
that limited interstate rivalry. He sees the tributary system as a performative script in which the “Sinocentric system had … no notion of balances
of power or great power concerts.”33 Brantley Womack concurs that the
tributary system contributed to three and a half centuries of peace
between China and Vietnam.34
The implications of such arguments are significant. Extrapolating from
these perspectives – if they are correct – suggests that the sole emphasis on
the distribution of military power and economic interdependence in
contemporary debates is misguided. Stability and peace might hinge
upon shared norms and principles of order. Moreover, specific interpretations of the nature of the tributary system and its consequences have
interjected themselves into contemporary debates regarding China’s relations with its neighbors. So how should we understand the tributary
system?
4.2.2
The Multiple Dimensions of the Tributary System:
Skeptical Voices
In contrast to the scholarship attributing benign effects to the tributary
system, critics point out that neither the nature of the system, nor its
effects, are as clear as alleged.35 Recall that even Fairbank saw the tributary system as encompassing many elements. “One untouched aspect of
the system is its functioning as a diplomatic medium. Since all foreign
relations in the Chinese view were ipso facto tributary relations, it followed that all types of international intercourse … had to be fit into the
tributary system.”36 At times Fairbank also viewed the system as primarily a means to organize trade. Given that the Chinese emperor conveyed
greater benefits to those who performed the ritualistic submission, tribute
served as the means for actors to exchange goods. Although tributary
trade was only a small portion of the overall exchange of goods, it served
as a means to establish relations.37 Thus, all types of relations within the
empire and with other polities were classified as tributary relations, to
reinforce the image of Chinese hierarchy.38
Peter Perdue suggests another interpretation of tributary relations. He
notes that tribute is a translation of the term gong, which can have multiple
33
35
36
37
38
Ringmar 2012, 16. 34 Womack 2012, 3.
By contrast, Smith argues that Chinese mapping practices provide clear evidence of a
tributary system. Qing maps and images of the world placed China geographically at the
center of the world, with others in a subsidiary position. Smith 2013, 1–18.
Fairbank and Têng 1941, 141.
Kang notes the much larger share of nontributary trade across the region. Kang
2010a, 109.
F. Zhang 2009, 559.
Gathering All under Heaven
93
meanings. Primarily, however, it should be understood as gift giving by
inferiors to superiors at all levels: the emperor would make sacrifices to
heaven; commoners would provide gifts to officials, and so on. Gong was
reciprocally rewarded with ci, bestowals. In return for gifts received,
heaven would bestow good fortune on the emperor, and officials would
grant favors or concessions to commoners. For Perdue, tribute thus
covers an even broader set of relations than those acknowledged in
Fairbank’s classical study.
The term gong did not distinguish “foreigners” from “natives”: anyone could offer
tribute under certain ritual regulations; giving tribute in itself did not mark one as
a barbarian, a foreigner, or an outsider … The two primary misleading implications of Fairbank and his collaborators’ work were first, to imply that gong always
had the same meanings, and to choose gong ritual as exclusively and predominantly a marker of foreign relations.39
Moreover, some scholars have questioned the alleged uniformity of
Chinese culture that formed the basis of the tributary system. If the
tributary system is taken as spanning several millennia, as several scholars
suggest, then Confucianism was not unchallenged, particularly during
the early phases of imperial unification. During the later Warring States
period (453–221 BCE), Confucians were routinely confronted by the
Legalists.40 In contrast to the moralism advocated by the Confucians,
the Legalists advocated for conduct in domestic and international spheres
that resembled contemporary versions of Realpolitik.41 Legalist views
influenced the Qin dynasty, and although in decline during the subsequent Han rule, they continued to sway political elites.
Even the later dynasties, including the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing
(1644–1912), appealed to Buddhism and Daoism, not just Confucian
principles, to legitimate their rule. Evelyn Rawski describes such policies
as politicized ethnicity, which included offerings to Daoist deities and
worship of Buddha as well as Manchu Shamans. “Compartmentalization
of the cultural patronage appealing to different subjects in the empire was
a hallmark of the Qing ritual system.”42 Thus, beyond the intellectuals
and political elites, Daoism exercised considerable influence on the general population. Indeed, for all the prominence of Confucian doctrine,
Chinese belief systems were hardly monochromatic and continued to
befuddle the European arrivals in the sixteenth and later centuries. How
39
41
42
Perdue 2009, 86. 40 Pines 2012.
See the discussion by Waldron 1996, 962–64. Schwartz describes the Legalists as sociopolitical engineers who became advisors for princes in the science of power. Schwartz
1975, 67–68.
Rawski 2015, 142; see also 114–15.
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The East Asian Sino-centric Order
should one regard Daoism and Confucianism? Were these religions, civic
rituals, or pagan expressions?43
Additionally, others are altogether critical of attributing causal effects
to the apparent cultural supremacy of China and the shared Confucian
belief systems. These critics argue that the tributary system served merely
as a veneer to mask political calculations that Western international
relations scholarship would classify as realist politics. Kirk Larsen
describes the tributary system as a comforting fiction to mask inequality
and coercion, and to prevent vassals from having relations with other
polities. Indeed, he suggests that the participants themselves were unaware of the rules of the system.44 Haraprasad Ray notes that the Hongwu
(Ming) emperor in 1395 listed fifteen states that should not be invaded.
Yet, at the same time, China intervened in Annam, Champa, and Sri
Lanka. For Ray, the system followed Chinese realpolitik.45 Yuan-kang
Wang argues that Kang’s study of the tributary system is based on the
Ming and Qing dynasties, periods of rule in which the Chinese Empire
was more powerful than its neighbors. Chinese material power rather
than Confucian values thus informed the lack of conflict during that
period. When confronted by equally strong powers, as was the Song
dynasty (960–1127) by the northern Liao and Jin empires, the Chinese
interacted on the basis of equality or even subservience. “To understand
international relations in historical East Asia, one needs to go beyond the
facade of the tributary system and examine the raw reality of power
masked by the benign Confucian rhetoric that political actors used.”46
But even if the system of ritual performance and the exchange of gifts
and trade were more than a cover for material and strategic calculations,
the contours and content of the tributary system remain opaque. John
Wills argues that the system only existed as a truly coherent set of
practices for scarcely a century, during the height of the Ming dynasty,
roughly coinciding with the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.47
In contrast, Fangyin Zhou suggests that the tributary system lasted for
thousands of years.48 James Hevia notes that Fairbank saw evidence of a
tributary system as early as the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BCE), while
43
46
47
48
Menegon 2013, 193–222. 44 Larsen 2013, 242. 45 Ray 1987, 72–76.
Yuan-kang Wang 2013, 208. Fairbank and Têng interestingly observe that the recording
and insistence on tribute might have increased as the empire grew weaker. Thus, for the
later Qing, prestige substituted to create the impression of power. Fairbank and Têng
1941, 199. Amitav Acharya also suggests multiple alternative causes behind the long
peace in Asia. Acharya 2003–4, 154–55.
Wills suggests that “the years from about 1425 to 1550 were the only time in all of Chinese
history when a unified tributary system embodying these tendencies was the matrix for
policy decisions concerning all foreigners.” Wills 2011, 3.
Zhou 2011, 149.
95
Gathering All under Heaven
49
others dated it back to the Han (206 BCE–220 CE). Yuen Foong
Khong sees an expansive tributary system in not only terms of time,
suggesting it existed for more than 1,800 years, but also in terms of
members. He includes Korea, Vietnam, Japan, and the Ryu-kyus (LiuChiu islands) as core members; an inner zone consisting of Mongolia,
Tibet, and Central Asia; and an outer zone comprising Russia, Holland,
and England.50
Epistemological differences add to the diverse views. Understanding
the tributary system or, more broadly, the Chinese perspective of itself
and the world, remains contested partially because of the difficulties
involved with comprehending concepts and terms across linguistic
contexts.51 Even if there might be rough agreement on translation, the
meaning of concepts can invoke starkly different sentiments. Does
“Tianxia,” often translated as “All under Heaven,” suggest an inclusive
and culturally sensitive view of the world, a perspective that welcomes
those willing to be civilized to Chinese mores and conduct?52 Or, alternatively, does it suggest an intolerant, myopic view in which others are to
be incorporated, by choice or force, to the superior civilization?
Similarly, terms such as yi (barbarian) have different inflections. For
some, the term is a rough classification of all non–Han Chinese. In
Chinese accounts of tribute, Korea is mentioned in the same category
as western barbarians such as the Dutch and Portuguese, even though
Korea had far greater affinity with Confucian principles than the western
powers.53 By the nineteenth century, however, particularly the British
interpreted yi as having a very specific negative connotation. Contestation
over the use of the term thus served as a catalyst to assert British cultural
superiority.54
49
51
52
53
54
Hevia 2009, 72. See also Fairbank and Têng 1941, 142. 50 Khong 2013, 11, 35.
The European desire to classify belief systems according to Western categories provides a
telling example. Missionaries disparaged Buddhism and Daoism, which they viewed as
rival religions to Christianity. But they did not know what to make of the Chinese elite’s
adherence to Confucian rites. Jesuits viewed these as civic in nature. Dominicans and
Franciscans were more critical. Their debates circled back to discussions in Europe as to
what constituted a religion in the first place. Menegon 2013, 214, 219–21.
Consequently, the differentiation between Hua (civilized) and Yi (barbarian) peoples has
various inflections. The Confucian idea suggests transformation is open to all, Han and
non-Han alike. But whether barbarians had indeed been transformed was open to
interpretation. This particularly became an issue with the incorporation of non-Han
peoples into the empire. Rawski 2015, 190, 223.
Fairbank and Têng 1941, 182–84.
As Lydia Liu notes, the transcription of Yi as “barbarian” was part of a British cultural
assertion that culminated in their demand that the term be stricken altogether. Although
the term did not have the same meaning as the European concept of barbarian, by
asserting that the term conveyed inequality and violence toward British subjects, the
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The East Asian Sino-centric Order
The claim that analyses of the tributary system fail to acknowledge
multiple modes of interaction and variation provides perhaps the most
poignant critique. Quoting Gungwu Wang and Yongnian Zheng, Feng
Zhang concludes, “considered as a whole, the model’s biggest problem is
that of being ‘a static framework which lacks any sense of change and
reflects mainly the world order that the Chinese court preferred to
perceive’.”55 Zhang suggests that consequently we should treat the tributary system as a dependent variable rather than an independent variable.
Why is it that the tributary system operated with particular salience at
some junctures but not others?
Finally, for methodological reasons it is difficult to attribute the historically peaceful nature of East Asian relations – in terms of interstate
relations – to a shared Confucian culture alone. Arguably the Chinese
Empire was materially more powerful than its neighbors. Realpolitik
arguments, such as those of Yuan-kang Wang, which attribute Chinese
supremacy to China’s military and economic power rather than to its
culture, cannot be dismissed because both, or either, material and cultural variables could account for the outcome.
4.3
Manifesting Cultural Supremacy: Viewing Politics
through the Prism of Tributary Relations
Given these critiques does the concept of an East Asian tributary system
still have analytic value? Some of the difficulties with current studies of the
East Asian system arise from a tendency to attribute a static hierarchical
order to East Asia. In that perspective the architecture of the system could
simply be defined as Chinese hegemony, centered solely on Confucian
doctrine, wherein China’s superiority was at all times recognized by
neighboring tributary states. International order in this sense could be
captured by a single hierarchical ranking with the Chinese dynasties at the
apex. That view is incorrect.
4.3.1
The Plurality of “Chinese” Empires and Meanings
My key point is that the tributary system could take on various meanings
depending on the context of the relationship. The system nevertheless
provided a coherent framework that guided political actors. Tributary
relations should be understood as a flexible system that exerted
55
British government could make it into a test case of its superiority over the Qing. That is,
it sought to dominate the language game of contested concepts. Liu 2004, chapter 2.
F. Zhang 2009, 559.
Gathering All under Heaven
97
constraints but also provided opportunities to those at various positions
within the system. David Kang’s key insight reveals that tributary relations provided common “rules of the game, the way hierarchy was
defined.”56 That such hierarchy could be manipulated and sometimes
even inverted is less important than the insight that actors understood
interpolity relations in that manner. The tributary system operated in a
broad cultural context in which Confucian norms and principles played a
key role, even if other frames and tropes were interjected. The Chinese
Empire and other polities of Central and East Asia operated within shared
cognitive scripts for how polities should be ordered and how relations
with other states should be conducted.
Confucianism formed the foundation of the East Asian belief system,
intermixed with various other sources. Benjamin Schwartz argues that
pre-Confucian ideas from as early as the second millennium BCE influenced Chinese civilization in the millennia thereafter. “What we find in
these writings is the image of an all-embracing, sociopolitical and cultural
order in which men relate to each other in terms of a structured system of
roles – familial and political … All of these roles … are governed by
elaborate normative rules of behavior (li).”57 Pre-Confucian ideas regarding ancestor worship, filial piety, and the moral responsibility of the ruler,
were gradually incorporated into a Confucian framework. The Han
Confucianist interpretation that emerged in the aftermath of the
Warring States period amalgamated Taoist, Legalist, and Confucian
ideas which in the subsequent millennium spread to Korea and Japan.58
Particularly relevant for the political order was the manner in which
Confucianism built on earlier notions that a transcendent ruler, the
sage-king, sustained the correct order of the world. The heavenly mandate was granted to the ruler as long as he performed his ritual, political,
and ethical tasks.59
The Song dynasty institutionalized Confucianism by making NeoConfucianism a key foundation of its administration. The state-controlled civil service exam provided an important means of spreading
Confucian principles from the top down to make them shared by the
general population. Whereas in the early eleventh century only about
20,000 students tried the examinations, by the middle of the thirteenth
56
57
58
59
Kang 2010a, 8.
Schwartz 1975, 58. The king is ultimately responsible for maintaining harmony and the
normative order.
Rozman 1981, 8, 25. For a discussion of how Chinese and Confucian norms influenced
Japan from the sixth century on, particularly in the understanding of hierarchy and proper
station, see Benedict 1946, chapter 3.
Schwartz 1975, 60.
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The East Asian Sino-centric Order
century 400,000 took the exam.60 The Confucian core of these exams
created strong incentive for families to orient themselves to Confucianism
in order to obtain upward mobility. The Mongols, the Yuan dynasty,
went even further making Neo-Confucianism state orthodoxy.61 The
subsequent Ming and Qing dynasties similarly institutionalized NeoConfucianism as a means to centralize their power and organize their
administration, even if ideas regarding proper authority and standards of
civilization could take on local variations within that dominant script.
Moreover, historical analysis shows there was no singular Sino-centric
order or a static Chinese identity. Even if one conceives of “China” in
demographic terms, as simply the area with a predominantly Han
Chinese population, one cannot equate that entity with a Han Chinese–
dominated empire.
China, so conceived, was never isolated from multiple influences,
particularly from the nomadic and seminomadic peoples to its north
and west. The Qin Empire (221–206 BCE) and the Han (206 BCE–
220 CE) had to contend with the Xiongnu (Hsiung-nu); the Tang (618–
907) had to contend with Turkic invaders and the Liao Empire; the Song
(960–1279) similarly were challenged by the Manchurian Jurchen (the Jin
Empire) and the Tanguts (the Xi Xia Empire). Evelyn Rawski has thus
rightfully emphasized the north and northeast frontier peoples as being
critical actors in the development of the “Chinese” empires, though they
were relegated to the status of peripheral polities in later historiography.
As she notes, “north or northeast Asian regimes have ruled North China
over two-thirds of the millennium ending in 2000.”62
Consequently, attributing a specific Han Chinese identity to the tributary system of the Ming and Qing dynasties becomes problematic. Prior
to the Ming ascent to power, the Mongol successors of Chinggis Khan
had repressed most of the Eurasian continent from Southern Russia to the
Chinese sea. One such successor Mongol dynasty, the Yuan, ruled the
territory that we associate today with China proper for over a century
(1260–1368).
After the Yuan dynasty had been driven out, the Ming chroniclers
interpreted Yuan rule to fit the preferred narrative. In their account of
the period, in the Yuan Shi, the chroniclers noted how the Yuan had
become increasingly Sinicized, thus reaffirming the cultural narrative of
recognized supremacy of traditional Han civilization. In reality, however,
60
61
Ebrey 1981, 68–69. As Kracke observed, “the Confucian classics became a fundamental
part of the state constitution … This function of the classics was not formally stated in the
legal codes; it was accepted as an assumption so basic that it required no statement.”
Kracke 1953, 21.
Ebrey 1981, 73. 62 Rawski 2015, 226.
Gathering All under Heaven
99
Mongol influences continued to affect Ming policies and administration.
Although the Ming (1368–1644) remained concerned with Mongol influences, they used Mongol forces in their empire and allowed Mongol law
to be applied.
While the Ming might be conceived as close to the commonly perceived
model – of a Han Chinese elite controlling the territory of what are now
the eastern provinces of the People’s Republic of China – the same cannot
be said for the last imperial dynasty, the Qing (1644–1912), which
expanded the realm well beyond the frontiers of the Ming Empire. The
Qing were ethnically Jurchen and ethnically closer to the Mongols than to
the Han. Renaming themselves as the Manchu, the Qing defeated the
Ming and assumed the throne for themselves.
The Qing imperial elite itself was hardly wedded to a traditional
Chinese Confucian tradition. Multiple influences from the Qing’s steppe
past continued to play a role in administration and governance. Their
legitimation hinged on their ability to tap into multiple narratives and
tropes to justify their rule. Invoking Confucian traditions was only one
means to do so. There was no “one” Chinese imperial identity. Nor was it
static. The tributary system, Chinese/East Asian identity, and East Asian
relations were all more multivocal, heterogeneous, and flexible than static
analyses have suggested.
Tracing the intellectual history of specific Chinese concepts similarly
reveals considerable variety in meanings and applications of authority.
The Chinese concept Tianxia provides an example of such malleability.
Some scholars have argued that Tianxia served as a guiding principle for
Chinese imperial conduct vis-à-vis all peoples. Tianxia denoted the universalist self-perception of the Chinese emperor as the conduit between
the sacred and profane, and as the bearer of a divinely sanctioned civilization. Since ancient times, the ruler established the ordering of the world
and the return of the seasons through rituals. Indeed, he was an intermediary between the living and dead.63
Consequently, as the cultural and geographic center of the world, the
Chinese emperor was the logical and legitimate universal ruler. Those
beyond the empire’s frontiers could join by assimilation and thereby
become civilized. In this sense, Tianxia formed part of a coherent and
homogeneous set of beliefs regarding the status of China and the world
around it.
But Mingming Wang convincingly shows that the concept was far from
static. The meaning of Tianxia varied across dynasties. Although its roots
emerged probably in the Shang period (roughly 1500–1100 BCE), it
63
Crossley 1992, 1477.
100
The East Asian Sino-centric Order
appeared more frequently in the Zhou period (c. 1046–256 BCE), denoting an imperial aspiration and legitimation of unity in multiple spheres –
divine and profane, humans and animals.
Because the king of Zhou lived neither in an age of nation-states, nor possessed,
for that matter, any corresponding theory of national borders, he did not place
clear-cut lines of demarcation between inside and outside, nor was he anxious to
separate the realistic from the imaginary.64
Imaginary cosmography identified the frontiers of the empire as the limits
of the universe rather than as the physical limits of the empire. Wang
explicitly refers to Clifford Geertz’s notion of the theater state in which
ceremonial performances are critical. Similarly, the concept of Tianxia
shows close affinities with Tambiah’s concept of a galactic polity.65 A
galactic empire in South and Southeast Asia consisted of a center encompassing other centers, constituting a kingdom of kingdoms, positioned in
a set of concentric circles with power radiating out from the center.
Similar to a galactic empire, the Zhou worldview distinguished five
zones: the inner domain of the capital; the outer domain of princes; a
zone of pacification; a zone of allied groups (semicultured); and finally,
the zone of savages.66 And like the galactic polities, the Chinese conception of Tianxia sought to link the territorial and spiritual world.
However, with the fragmentation of the Spring and Autumn periods
(c. 771–476 BCE) and the Warring States period (c. 450–221 BCE), the
reality of the situation sometimes led to a more confined meaning of the
term referring to the nine counties of the earlier dynasties. A millennium
later, by the time of the Tang dynasty, Tianxia referred to the territory
controlled by the empire and did not also include the world beyond. In
some instances, the concept referred more to the unity of people than to
geographic space.67
In short, there can be little doubt that Chinese collective consciousness
held China as the center of a moral universe in which Chinese civilization
interwove the temporal with the sacred. But “Chinese” collective consciousness was not the monopoly of native or Han Chinese. Indeed,
significant parts of the Chinese Empire were often controlled by nonHan rulers, as the Khitan, the Jurchen, and the Tanguts, with the
Mongols conquering the entire territory of China proper.
Nor can we simply ascribe to particular Chinese terms as Tianxia a
uniform interpretation that predestined the various dynasties to seek
factual domination over other polities. The claim to be the civilizational
64
66
M. Wang 2012, 343. 65 Tambiah 2013, 503–34.
M. Wang 2012, 338, 343, 345. 67 Callahan 2008, 751–53.
Gathering All under Heaven
101
center of the known world, as well as the means by which harmony might
be achieved between the spiritual and profane worlds, had multiple
inflections, which did not preclude the participation of non-Han peoples.
4.3.2
Multivocal Legitimation and Imperial Heterogeneity
As with all empires that justify their rule as universal, the realities of
imperial administration require pragmatic adjustment to the diversity of
religions, ethnicities, and racial groups that inhabit the imperial domain.
Similarly, the empire, while justifying its rule as universal, has to find
means to interact with the polities beyond its frontiers.
Consequently, non-Han emperors and Han emperors alike had to deal
with such issues. Moreover, given cultural exchanges, military conquests,
and cross-frontier trade, the various empires that came to control Central
and East Asia mutually influenced each other in practices and disposition.
For centuries if not millennia, the dynasties of China and the peoples of
the Central Asian steppe interacted symbiotically. A unified and prosperous China provided trading opportunities for the steppe tribes or booty by
raiding, thereby making unified action by the otherwise loosely organized
tribal federation possible. When China was racked by turmoil and civil
war, the lack of economic benefits for unified action decreased in the
steppe as well. The steppe tribes on China’s northwestern frontiers were
not interested in the territorial conquest of China proper. The organization of China and the steppe thus worked in parallel fashion.
Conversely, the Manchurian tribes to China’s northeast sought territorial gains in China proper when China was weak. Unlike their steppe
counterparts, the Manchu sought to control and directly exploit China’s
wealth by assuming the mantle of their Han predecessors.68
The Mongols under Chinggis Khan broke with the previous pattern of
their steppe forbearers as well. Mongol organization consisted of increasing levels of incorporation, extending from the household to the extended
family, clan, tribe, and, ultimately, tribal confederation. The latter was a
temporary unity of tribes banding together to wage war or raid neighboring territories. Chinggis raised this to new levels, all based on an unprecedented military capability. Unity, however, was achieved by military
success, and was only maintained by continued conquests. The results are
well known. Within Chinggis’s lifetime, Mongol armies swept through
and conquered much of Eurasia, and Chinggis became the iconic “world
conqueror.”
68
This is the crux of relations between China, the steppe tribes, and the Manchurian tribes,
according to Barfield 1989, 8–11, 15. See also Rawski 2015, 837.
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The East Asian Sino-centric Order
As a result, Chinggis and his successors faced two sets of key problems.
How could they legitimate their rule over an enormous territory with
vastly different populations? How might they hold these territories without provoking rebellions by the indigenous elites? When the Mongols
faced a technologically advanced and well entrenched state apparatus, as
that of the Han Chinese, these problems were particularly acute.
Problems were also exacerbated by frequent internecine struggles
within the Mongol tribal federation. Such struggles for power were compounded by the use of more than half a dozen different principles to
determine succession.69 With the plethora of possible claims and claimants, the most virulent struggles often emerged within the same family.
Chinggis thus based his political and military organization on loyal followers rather than family members, partially because he remembered how
members of the extended family had betrayed his household.
Consequently, he allowed considerable autonomy for local rulers, provided they remained loyal.70
After Chinggis’s death, another succession principle gained considerable strength: the link to the house of Chinggis, with only one Great Khan
possible at any given time. Nevertheless, succession struggles started
almost as soon as Chinggis died, resulting in the division of Mongol
holdings among various khanates. Descendants of Jochi, one of
Chinggis’s sons, formed the Khans of the Golden Horde, who ruled the
northwestern territories ranging into southern Russia. Chaghadai,
another son, got the Transoxiana region; his grandson Hülegü and his
heirs created the Il-khanate centered on the Persian heartland; and
another grandson, Khubilai, gained control of the Eastern region and
create the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368). The idea that lineage to the house
of Chinggis legitimated a ruler would hold sway for centuries thereafter,
not just among the Mongols, but for other Chinese dynasties as well, and
it even played a role in the Islamic world.71
The complexities of Mongol succession practices might suggest one
reason why the Mongols were receptive to traditional Chinese practices.
Confucian tradition held to the principle of primogeniture, with the first
born son as the one in line for succession. Hence, flexibility and adaptation to non-Mongol practices could yield administrative benefits.
69
71
Barfield 1989, 206–12; Crossley 1992, 1473. 70 Barfield 1989, 191–92, 199.
As Ji-Young Lee has suggested, succession practices differed significantly and importantly in Central and East Asia. In the latter, lineal succession was the norm. Moreover,
given the importance for Koryŏ and Chosŏ n rulers to gain external legitimation from the
Chinese emperor, succession struggles typically were muted. This in turn might partially
explain the longevity of such dynasties. Lee 2017.
Gathering All under Heaven
103
Flexibility and accommodation also facilitated Mongol military successes. When Chinggis rose to power in 1206, the Mongol army consisted
of approximately 95,000 troops. As his successes accumulated, the army
increasingly gained a multitribal composition, with Mongols, Jurchen
(Manchurians), and Khitans, who had been part of the Liao or Khitan
empire (907–1125). Han Chinese engineers were added as well.72
The Mongols’ eclectic religious policies helped to facilitate their
rule over a vast territory with many disparate ethnic and religious
groups. As Chris Atwood shows, Chinggis Khan himself was indifferent to the various religions in his vast empire, although the practice
should not be understood as deliberate religious tolerance. “In fact,
neither tolerance nor indifference and skepticism played any part.
Mongol religious policy was based on a series of assertions about
heaven’s (or God’s) role in human affairs that added up to a coherent
political theology.”73
Rather than tolerance, the policy originated from the idea that established religions that had links to powerful polities could enhance the
worldly success of the khan, if their adherents prayed for him. This was
the quid pro quo for recognition. Thus, Chinggis and his successors
recognized several key religions and granted priests and monks tax
exemption and other privileges. Christianity, Buddhism, and Daoism
were granted such status from the beginning of Mongol expansion.
Confucianism was added as an exempt religion in 1232 and Judaism
was added as a fifth exempt religion in 1330 by the Yuan dynasty.74
Islam was added as well. As the Persian chronicler Juvainy noted, the
promulgations by Chinggis (the Yasa) contained clauses stating that
Chinggis was:
The adherent of no religion and the follower of no creed, he eschewed bigotry and
the preference of one faith to another, and placing of some above others; rather he
honored and respected the learned and pious of every sect, recognizing such
conduct as the way to the Court of God.75
However, not all religions were given such status, and indeed, some, such
as the Ismaili branch of Islam, were persecuted as enemies of the Mongol
state.
Mongol indifference among religions made it relatively easy for the
successors of Chinggis to accept and convert to the religious practices of
their conquered subjects. Like their Turkic predecessors, the Mongol
72
74
75
Barfield 1989, 191–95, 201–3. 73 Atwood 2004a, 238.
Atwood 2004a, 242–43, 250.
Gvosdev 2000, 516. Atwood points out that the Khan’s edicts granting exemptions to
priests of different faiths were remarkably consistent. Atwood 2004a, 239.
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The East Asian Sino-centric Order
rulers who conquered Islamic polities in the Middle East readily converted to Islam. In the East, they could readily absorb Buddhism, or
Confucian principles. In many instances the Mongol rulers could justify
their rule as universal rulers. Born as Temüjin, as a ruler he was officially
titled as “Chinggis Qa’an,” (Genghis Khan), the “oceanic or universal
khan.”76
Flexibility and heterogeneity also manifested in administrative practices. Prior to Khubilai Khan (r. 1260–94), the Mongols had shown little
interest in creating a sophisticated bureaucracy, and they instead relied
on institutions that were similar to those used in the Islamic world, such
as the ortuq (ortakh), the trading corporations that engaged in tax
farming.77 Khubilai, however, altered this policy and aimed to establish
a more formalized state apparatus with greater access for Han bureaucrats. More generally, given that khans depended on the acquiescence of
tribal leaders and lineage to maintain their rule, they were receptive to
Chinese models of governance, as they might be used to fortify the
khans’ own rule in a more centralized and systematic manner.
Consequently, the Mongols, and before them the Liao Empire
(907–1121) and the Jin Empire (1121–1234), gradually turned to
Chinese administrative templates.78 In addition to expanded access
for Han bureaucrats, the Yuan emperors also adopted the practice of
classifying relations with others as tributary relations.
Preserving the ability to deploy multiple cognitive frames, Khubilai at
the same time also maintained his status as khagan of the steppe, and as
Great Khan.79 Despite increased access for the Han, the top military and
civilian posts were retained for the Mongols and Central Asians (semu),
even though they amounted to no more than 2 to 3 percent of the total
population.80
Yuan policies served the interests of both parties. The Han elites could
interpret such Mongol policies as conversion to Chinese civilization and
thereby maintain the historical narrative of the civilized, supreme center.
The Yuanshi, the official history of the Yuan dynasty by chroniclers of the
subsequent Ming dynasty, thus described the Mongol rulers as having
absorbed Chinese ideals.81
For the Yuan, Chinese practices and Confucian principles could
coexist with their traditional beliefs. One did not preclude the other.
The success of the Mongols, and of their successor dynasties, came not
only from their military prowess but also from their ability to legitimate
76
79
Crossley 1992, 1473, fn. 16. 77 Barfield 1989, 204. 78 Crossley 1992, 1473–74.
Barfield 1989, 205. 80 Barfield 1989, 220. 81 Brose 2006, 341, 344.
Gathering All under Heaven
105
their rule in a multivocal manner. They could appeal to the many diverse
religious and ethnic groups in their vast empire.
Mongol influences did not disappear when the Yuan rule came to an
end due to various rebellions. Hongwu (r. 1368–98) led one such rebellion and became the founder of the Ming dynasty. Despite their ascendance, the Ming emperors had to find means to incorporate the Mongols.
Consequently, the Ming incorporated Mongol contingents into their
military administration.82
Moreover, contrary to accounts that suggest unidirectional civilizing
influences flowing from the Han Chinese to the Mongols, one might argue
that “‘Chinese’ conceptions about China’s proper place in Asia – the Son of
Heaven’s appropriate role in his realm – as well as political institutions, social
customs, dress, and language were all deeply influenced by the Yuan
Mongols.”83 Only after the fifteenth century did Mongol influences start
to recede.84 Thus, Mongol influence diminished over time but was never
totally absent.
The Ming tried to incorporate many other groups as well.
In addition to the Mongols, one might also mention Korean, Jurchen, and
other foreign-born eunuchs in the service of the Ming court as well as
Jurchen valiants who served in the imperial bodyguard. They held positions
within the official imperial bureaucracy, drew stipends … communicated in
Mandarin, and often educated their offspring in the Confucian classics.85
The conquests of Yunnan led to further inclusion of non-Han elites in
lower levels of government administration.86 Although Han administrators were interjected into local administrations, many indigenous
chieftains maintained their positions. In exchange, the subjected rulers
paid tribute and provided military resources for the Ming. Similarly,
during the short Ming occupation of Vietnamese territories,
Vietnamese officials continued to occupy many of the administrative
posts.87
The pattern of incorporation of multiple ethnicities and races, and the
multivocal means of legitimation of the Yuan and Ming, continued with
the Qing dynasty. Even while the Qing dynasty maintained their Manchu
heritage, they also fully institutionalized the inclusion of different groups
in their military. Jurchen military organization centered on the arrow
82
84
85
86
87
Barfield 1989, 231; Robinson 1999, 80, 84, 86. 83 Robinson 1999, 81.
Hucker 1958, 22. See also Robinson, who suggests the role of commoners already started
to increase after 1435. Robinson 1999, 116, 120.
Robinson 1999, 123.
Non-Han aboriginal chiefs were given relative autonomy and received titles from the
emperor but were not given imperial stipends. Hucker 1958, 20, 48.
J. Anderson 2013, 266.
The East Asian Sino-centric Order
106
88
unit. Of the 400 arrow units in 1614, 308 were Jurchen, 76 were
Mongol, and 16 were Chinese.89 Fifty arrow units composed one banner.
At the beginning of the Qing dynasty, Nurhaci (1559–1626) organized
the Manchu military in eight banners, each consisting of approximately
5,500 men. Three of these banners were considered the elite Manchu
units. These early banner units consisted of ethnic Manchu and Mongols,
as well as Han Chinese who had defected to Nurhaci. As their ranks
swelled and as the Manchu succeeded in defeating the Ming dynasty,
eight new banners, consisting of Mongol troops, were created by Hong
Taiji, Nurhaci’s successor. These banners were directly attached to the
imperial government and Taiji used them as an instrument to centralize
his power, at the expense of the Manchu aristocracy.90 Subsequently,
another eight banners were formed consisting of Han Chinese troops.91
One can thus argue that “the Manchu conquest of the Ming lands was
achieved with a multiethnic force, including a mixture of Sinicized
Manchus, Mongols, and Chinese ‘trans-frontiersmen’ living in northeast
Asia.”92
The Qing also strategically adopted many Confucian practices, and
performed the required rites and rituals. They legitimated their rule as
mandated by heaven because the Ming had been unjust rulers and had
thus violated Confucian injunctions. The Qing similarly used the
Confucian idea of merit and transformation to argue that the Mandate
from Heaven was bestowed on the basis of merit and virtue, not ethnic
origin.93 However, the Qing did not fully Sinicize or adopt Confucianism
to the exclusion of other belief systems, contrary to the assertions of Han
Chinese meritocracy. The Qianlong emperor (r. 1735–96), under whose
rule the Qing Empire reached its greatest territorial extent, still insisted on
the use of Manchu language, which remained an important language of
imperial administration throughout the Qing dynasty.94 Additionally,
Shamanism continued alongside Confucianism.
The Qing also continued to use ethnic classifications in bureaucratic
appointments, with designated numbers for Manchus or Han. Nurhaci
pursued segregation not assimilation, and assigned different rights to
88
89
91
92
93
94
The arrow unit (niru) founds its base in the Manchu hunting party. For a full discussion
of the Manchu organization, see Elliott 2001.
Barfield 1989, 253. 90 Barfield 1989, 260.
Crossley notes how the Eight Banner system functioned as a military but also administrative organization with exams administered in Chinese, Mongol, and Manchu.
Crossley 2008, 602, 605–6.
Rawski, citing Frederic Wakeman’s view. Rawski 1996, 834.
Rawski 2015, 218–21. Ming loyalists not surprisingly claimed such transformation was
impossible. The Manchu, as barbarians, were not legitimate heirs.
Rawski 1996, 829; 2015, 10–11.
Gathering All under Heaven
107
designated ethnic groups. Manchu dominated the administration and
lived in separate town quarters.95 Nurhaci staffed his Deliberative
Council with his sons (the banner princes) and ethnic Manchu ministers.
By 1730, emperor Yongzheng supplanted the Deliberative Council with
the newly created Grand Council, which was more open to Han Chinese.
Nevertheless, for three-quarters of emperor Qianlong’s reign the Manchu
still outnumbered Han Chinese.96 Consequently, office purchase was
quite common in order to acquire one of the limited number of positions
available to one’s ethnic background. Thus, the “Complete Register”
records that in 1798, close to 11,000 appointments were purchased,
contrary to popular belief that the bureaucratic administration functioned
entirely on the merit system.97
Moreover, the banner system itself only imperfectly integrated the Han
Chinese. While they were recognized in their own banners, the Manchu
banner men could not marry Han commoners but they could marry
Mongols. The Qing rulers also tried to segregate the banner men physically from the Chinese population by expelling the Chinese from certain
quarters in Beijing, although the ruling was poorly enforced.98
These examples lead to a key observation: The Qing emperors eclectically invoked multiple means of legitimation. As descendants of the
seminomadic rulers who controlled the frontier zones of the Chinese
Empire, they could invoke the legacy of the illustrious khans that had
preceded them. The Manchu script itself was based on Mongolian script.
The Qing, despite tapping into Confucian motifs, did not abandon their
connections to their steppe and Manchurian predecessors. “In the case of
the Qing, it is clear that while the khan became an emperor, he also
remained a khan.”99
But they used other frames as well. Buddhism and Daoism coexisted as
secondary frames of reference alongside Confucianism. Well before the
Qing, Buddhist influences and the image of Emperor Ashoka (r. 268–232
BCE), who had unified much of India in the Mauryan Empire, were
transmitted through the Mongols into the Chinese collective imagination.
Thus, from Khubilai Khan onward the emperor could also claim to be the
Chakravartin, the Sanskrit term for a universal ruler. “By his worldly
95
96
97
98
99
Barfield 1989, 256–57.
Rawski 1996, 832; 2015, 233–34. Their policies resembled a titular elite policy, with
Han, Mongol tribal leaders, and Tibetan prelates empowered in their local domains but
with a Manchu bannerman presiding.
Zhang 2013, 260, 281 fn. 62. Contrary to the practice in Europe, these positions did not
become hereditary.
Perdue 2009, 96.
Crossley 1992, 1474; 2008, 599. On close ties between Manchu and Mongols through
marriage and language, also see Rawski 1996, 833.
108
The East Asian Sino-centric Order
activism, the cakravartin moves the wheel of time and brings the universe
closer to the ages of salvation … the emperor himself was understood to
be the reincarnation of earlier cakravartin kings.”100 Hong Taiji,
Nurhaci’s son who renamed the Jurchen as the Manchu, and designated
the empire as the Qing Empire similarly invoked this image. The Qing
thus became Chakravartin, the universal ruler who ordered the world as
the conduit between the sacred and the profane.101
Further conquests in the west brought large Tibetan and Muslim
populations into the realm. Tibetan rituals were incorporated into the
Qing practices and vocabulary. Tibetan language was one of the five
recognized languages of the empire, and Tibetans were granted considerable autonomy. And as the Mongols had done before them, the Qing
incorporated and tolerated the practice of Islamic religion.102
But fully aware that they had replaced an ethnic Han dynasty, the Qing
emphasized Confucian rituals on their conquest of Beijing. They were
also keenly aware that the administration of their predecessors could be
used to stabilize and fortify their own position. Consequently, “after the
establishment of their dynasty in Beijing, the Qing themselves rejected
most of their own legal culture: the first edition of the Qing code, published in 1646, was, by and large, a copy of the Ming code.”103
R. Bin Wong maintains that the deliberate strategy to forge a unity
between the state and society foreshadowed modern attempts at nation
building and state formation. The Manchu deliberately inserted themselves into a Confucian system of rule. The Qing could strategically make
use of existing collective imagination because “officials, elites and common people shared a cultural universe in which expectations of proper
and desirable behavior spanned all groups.”104
Thus for the ethnic Han, the Qing had become the legitimate rulers of
the territory previously controlled by the Ming. By deploying a narrative
of Sinicization, the Qing could gain legitimacy while the Han Chinese
could maintain that the chain of recognized Chinese civilizational supremacy remained unbroken. The Qing were folded into “all under heaven”;
the Han had not been subdued by a foreign power. Conversely, the
peoples of Manchuria and the steppe populations of Central Asia could
100
101
102
103
Crossley 1992, 1482.
Crossley 2008, 599. She refers specifically to Stanley Tambiah’s work in this regard.
This was a recurrent image used to justify authority throughout South and Southeast
Asia. See also Perdue 2009, 96.
Despite imperial edits to protect the Uighurs, Muslims, however, were poorly integrated, because Islamic culture resisted the recognition of the emperor as the moral
center. Crossley 2008, 609–10, 615. Perdue also notes the difficulty of integrating
Xinjian. Perdue 2009, 94.
Heuschert 1998, 311. 104 Wong 1997, 171, fn. 5.
Gathering All under Heaven
109
identify with the Qing as khans. Tibetans recognized familiar Buddhist
images in the Qing rulers. Thus, the Qing emperor could be viewed as a
Mongol hunter, Taoist monk, Manchu warrior, and erudite Confucian all
integrated as one.105
Flexibility and adaptability did not preclude violence altogether.
Policies of accommodation and inclusion were matched by vast military
campaigns during the expansion of the Qing domains. When different
groups were willing to submit, expansion occurred relatively peacefully,
as with the Khalka and southern Mongols who had allied with the
Manchu. They were incorporated into the Qing domain, and were
entitled to different legal treatment under the Mongolian code, which
remained in effect until 1921. The Qing strove for standardization but in
reality accepted legal pluralism.106 Resistance, however, could result in
extreme violence. The Zunghars, part of the Oirat (Western Mongols),
were therefore annihilated in the middle of the eighteenth century.107
In short, the many different rulers who controlled China did not rule by
force alone. The Mongols, the Yuan dynasty, the Ming emperors and the
Manchu (Qing) rulers were all at times rulers of the “Chinese” Empire.
Ruling over vast territories and multiple peoples, they engaged in multivocal signaling. As Evelyn Rawski clarifies, “the archival materials
strongly support the argument that the Manchus disseminated different
images of rulership to the different subject peoples of their empire.”108
The Qing could deal with the Russians as equals; with Tibetans they
invoked Buddhist imagery.109
The emperor presented different faces to each of the main subject peoples. He was
the Son of Heaven to Han Chinese, a clan leader to his fellow Manchus, a descendant
of Chinggis Khan to the Mongols, and a patron of the Dalai Lama’s Buddhist sect to
the Tibetans. These claims to hegemony did not necessarily contradict each other,
but each applied in different ritual and ideological contexts.110
105
106
107
108
109
110
Crossley 2008, 599–600; Rawski 1996, 835, 838. Wong 1997, 170. On the imperial
relation with Tibet, see Oksenberg 2001, 94–98. Rowe similarly notes, “If the Qing ruler
was the Son of Heaven for his Chinese subjects, he was also the Khan of Khans for the
Mongols, the Chakravartin (Wheel-Turning King) for the Tibetans, and so on.” Rowe
2009, 17.
Heuschert 1998, 311–12, 317, 323.
Barfield 1989, 292–94; Heuschert 1998, 311–12, 314. The Qing thereby acquired
Turkmenistan and Tibet and banished references to the Zunghar from the official
records. Crossley 2008, 607–8.
Rawski 1996, 834.
Larsen 2013, 237. See also Hevia 2009, 82. Peter Perdue notes how this enabled the
Qing to extend their rule over subject populations. “The Qing rulers drew in many
subject elites to accept partial complicity in Qing domination in return for preservation
of their privileges and varying degrees of autonomy in their domains.” Perdue 2009, 92.
Perdue 2009, 96.
110
The East Asian Sino-centric Order
Accustomed to the nation-state as we are in today’s world, we are
inclined to assign singular identities to rulers and populations. State and
nation, at least in their ideal typical form, are melded uniformly together.
The “imagined community” transforms disparate ethnicities, races,
tribes, and so on, into a homogenous “nation.”111
But that is a product of modernity. Such uniformity was neither
expected, nor desired, in the multinational empires of this study. “As
universalists, the eighteenth-century Qing rulers, and the Qianlong
emperor in particular, were cognizant of the diverse sources of their
order and were meticulous in expressing them. The representations are
historically problematic, but the diversity itself need not be.”112
4.3.3
Making Collective Imagination “Real”
Architecture, rituals, art, and scientific endeavors reinforced the image of
the Chinese Empire as the center of a geographic and moral universe. As
Pamela Crossley suggests, identities were formed as created constituencies; they were not based on some intrinsic ethnicity. These constituencies were created by official histories, carefully practiced rituals, imagined
geographies, and selective education. The empire was made manifest in
its buildings and monuments, epic literature, and art.113 They served to
signal the synthesis of the empire and the authority of the emperor, thus
achieving unity despite diversity. This was all the more important given
that authority was not defined as sovereign control over a fixed territorial
space, as was the case in the emerging Westphalian system in Europe.
As early as the Zhou dynasty, a special class of administrators emerged,
the Shi, who were tasked to classify and administer rituals, for precise
adherence to prescribed rites was critical to maintain cosmological
integrity.114 Three collections, The Book of Rites, The Rites of Zhou, and
The Book on Etiquette and Rites became a critical part of the canon of
Confucianism. Although some of the original texts were destroyed during
the Qin dynasty, elements of these books became part of the foundational
classics throughout the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties and formed
integral parts of state examinations until the end of the Qing Empire.
Strict adherence to the prescribed rules and the state examinations conducted by the Board or Ministry of Rites (Li Bu) – one of the six Ministries
from the Tang dynasty till the end of the Qing – informed Chinese
collective consciousness.
111
112
Benedict Anderson’s term “imagined community” remains wonderfully apposite.
Anderson 1991.
Crossley 1992, 1483. 113 Crossley 2008, 597–98. 114 M. Wang 2012, 346, 347.
Gathering All under Heaven
111
During the Ming dynasty, the Ministry of Rites was in charge of
tributary relations, while the Ministry of War dealt with other groups,
such as the seminomadic tribes. The Qing maintained the Ministry of
Rites for tributary relations but created a new ministry, the Lifan Yuan, to
deal with the polities of Inner Asia.115
The rites contained a large number of prescriptions ranging from rules
on proper behavior; edicts in regard to funerals and remembrance;
instructions for rulers and administrators; the correct ascription of different ranks and decorum, and many more injunctions.116 Ceremonies were
critical for governance. As the Book of Rites dictated, “Of all the methods
for the good ordering of men, there is none more urgent than the use of
ceremonies.”117 In another section, Confucius replies in a dialogue with
Duke Ai,
According to what I have heard, of all things by which the people live the rites are
the greatest. Without them they would have no means of regulating the services
paid to the spirits of heaven and earth; without them they would have no means of
distinguishing the positions proper to father and son, to high and low, to old and
young.118
By correct ritual performance the emperor and officials maintained harmony in the material world as well as the balance and correct ordering of
the physical and spiritual realms.
Ancient Chinese conceptions of heaven and earth influenced later
dynasties and the representation of authority as well. In early Chinese
cosmology, heaven was placed above with earth below, and humans,
mountains, rivers, seas, and divinities occupied the middle. Earth was
grasped as having a square form under a round heaven. Consequently
temples and palaces were constructed on square platforms surrounded by
circular enclosures. Thus, by ritual enactment, earth and heaven were
made manifest at the micro-cosmic level.119
Since the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), the concept of “All under
Heaven,” Tianxia, was visually represented by a schematic of five squares,
representing five sacred mountains, distributed in a center and four
cardinal directions.120 Architectural designs incorporated this cosmological allusion. The táng (bright hall) design of temples and other sacred
115
117
118
119
120
Y. Wang 2018, 10–11; Yang 2011, 292. 116 See El Amine 2015, 91–92.
Rule 1, from the Ji Tong section (a summary account of sacrifices) in the Book of Rites.
James Legge translation. Accessed at https://ctext.org.
Rule 1 in the Ai Gong section of the Book of Rites. James Legge translation. Accessed at
https://ctext.org.
M. Wang 2012, 340. He also suggests that ancient cosmology continued to influence
practices in the late Qing Empire (368).
M. Wang 2012, 340.
112
The East Asian Sino-centric Order
Figure 4.1 The cosmic design schematic.
buildings became iconic. The design consisted of five squares within a
larger square, constituting the central temple, surrounded by concentric
circles. The circles designated the platforms on which the temple should
be constructed, reflecting the divine foundation of the earthly temple.
The large square itself could be expanded from five to a nine-in-one
square, an ancient schema in which the world was divided in nine parts
(extending the vertical and horizon lines of the five squares in the schema
would create nine squares). Within the inner square would be another
circle, signifying the axis mundi, the connection between earth and heaven (see Figure 4.1).
The palace built by the Wu Di emperor during the Han dynasty around
140 BCE thus consisted in the main building of nine square rooms, each
representing the nine divine prefectures. These also reflected the nine
provinces that made up the territorial domains of the first dynasties, the
territories controlled by the Xia (according to some scholars this might
have been a mythical dynasty from c. 2000–1600 BCE) and the Shang
Dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BCE). The building was slightly elevated above
rounded terraces, with the center part of the palace-temple forming its
highest point.121 Throughout later dynasties, the motif, with the numbers
5 and 9 carrying specific numerological importance, repeated itself. We
find it in the Tang dynasty temple complex at Chang’an as well as in Ming
temple complexes, such as the still existing Temple of Heaven in Beijing.
Performances similarly reinforced the cosmological foundation of
dynastic rule. As the seasons progressed, the emperor would perform
121
M. Wang 2012, 347, 352; Lewis 2006, 416. Also see Pankenier 1998, 26–34; 2010,
2030–40. Wheatley notes that important buildings have been raised on symbolic platforms since the Zhou dynasty of the first millennium. Wheatley 1971, 429.
Gathering All under Heaven
113
specific rituals to harmonize the heavens and earth. Pilgrimages of the
emperor to the various corners of the empire, particularly to the sacred
mountains, were scheduled according to the astrological calendar.
The correct orientation of any consecrated space, the scheduling of religious
ceremonies, and the proper conduct of seasonal occupations all depended on
the king. The ability to comprehend the celestial patterns … and to maintain
conformity between astral and terrestrial realms became a fundamental qualification for kingship.122
Through these actions the emperor aligned earth with heaven; right order
warded off chaos. Just as the deity, Lord Shangdi, ruled the universe, the
king should rule on earth as the conduit between the two realms. He
should be the immoveable North Star, as Confucius recommended, and
all others, indeed civilization itself revolved around him.123
Chinese mapping practices reflected this cosmological understanding
of the role of the emperor and of China as the center of civilization. Maps
were intended to reflect the moral universe.124 China was thus depicted at
the center of the world surrounded by the four-quarters populated by
outer barbarians (waiyi).125 Even as European maps became known, the
Chinese did not deviate from the practice that maps should serve a
cosmic-geographic function. Knowledge of European maps thus had
limited impact, not because of ignorance, but because what maps were
intended to signify differed fundamentally in European and East Asian
conceptions.126 Maps were not cameras to capture a given reality as much
as they were tools to create that reality. Hence the physical location of
polities mattered less than their placement within the cognitive scheme.
Thus, England was depicted just west of India for in the Chinese cognitive
scheme it occupied a similar position in the periphery, outside the
immediate orbit of the Chinese Empire.127
Urban planning also invoked cosmological understanding. The imperial
capitals of China were meant to convey the harmony between the sacred and
profane, embodied by the actions of the imperial dynasty. Ancient Chinese
cities were ideally laid out in cosmograms, models of the cosmos.128 As such,
the layout of the sacred city should be that of a symmetrical rectangle with
122
124
125
126
127
128
Pankenier 1998, 26. 123 Pankenier 1998, 29.
Branch 2014 similarly notes how European cartography reflected political imagination
and how ideational views, maps, and material practices were co-constituted.
China was perceived as the center of the world, in both geographic and cultural terms.
Thus, geographic location also denoted proximity to civilization. Bohnet 2014, 202.
Bohnet 2014, 203; Brose 2006, 327.
On the use and meaning of maps, also see Boyle 2016, 66–79.
Wheatley concurs with Mircea Eliade that key buildings and entire cities were meant to
symbolically replicate the cosmic order. Wheatley 1971, 417–18.
114
The East Asian Sino-centric Order
nine gates and the royal palace at its center. The emperor should also build
the capital in an auspicious location. Ceremonial buildings were laid out on a
north-south pattern. Examining the axial design and cardinal orientation of
Beijing, Paul Wheatley observed that,
The official visitor was formerly confronted in his progress along the processional
way by seemingly interminable succession of gates, towers, and walls, the passing
of each of which brought him nearer not only to the center of the city but also to
the omphalos of the kingdom, of the world, and of the universe, the point where the
Son of Heaven, in the words of Mencius (VIIA, xxi, 2), “stood in the center of the
earth and [thereby] stabilized the people within the four seas.”129
The Chinese emperors also assiduously sought to reinforce collective
imagination through sponsoring specific historical accounts. As already
noted, the Ming dynasty’s official history of the preceding Yuan dynasty
gave a Sinicized interpretation of their rule and justifications for the Ming
succession. The Qing were no different. The Ming Veritable Records (Ming
Shilu), the Chosŏ n Veritable Records (Wangjo Sillok), and the Veritable
Records of the Qing Dynasty (Da Qing Shilu) were amended and written
to demonstrate the legitimacy of the extant regime, or to portray their
polities in a favorable light.130
As the sole agent of intercourse between Heaven and humans, the Qing emperor/
khan/king was the owner of all speech past, present, and future. It was in this role that
he sponsored dictionaries, encyclopedias, historical compendia, poetic compositions, and monumental epigraphy; and it was in this same role that he fulfilled the
function of altering, censoring, hiding, banning, or burning words and symbols.131
The emperors maintained close control over specific branches of knowledge, given that the imperial dynasty had to demonstrate an ability to
portend important astrological events and schedule specified ritual observations depending on a precise calendar. During the Han dynasty,
“unauthorized dabbling in astrological prognostication and calendrical
science became a capital offense, though the law was seldom enforced.”132
129
130
131
Wheatley 1967, 18. (The omphalos religious stone, as it appeared in various locations in
the Mediterranean, such as Delphi, denoted the “navel,” the center, of the world.) The
layout of Chinese capitals finds its origin in a first century BCE text, the Kao Gong Ji
(K’ao-kung Chi). It is epitomized in Chang’an (the capital of the Tang dynasty) and later
capitals in China and Japan, including Kyoto and Beijing. Wheatley 1971, 454. Nancy
Steinhardt also notes the continued designs and symbolism over an extended period.
“The concept of the capital as China’s most important economic and ritual centre, as
well as where the ruler lives, begins in Shang and continues into the 2nd millennium
CE.” Steinhardt 2013, 16.
Rawski 2015, 10–14. The Ming statutes thus grossly inflated the number of vassal states,
claiming that 123 states paid tribute to the Ming. Yang 2011, 292.
Crossley 1992, 1480. 132 Pankenier 1998, 31.
Gathering All under Heaven
115
If a dire imperial prediction failed to materialize, court astrologists noted
how the great virtue of the emperor had averted the imminent disaster.
To conclude, ritual performances, urban design, palace architecture,
and control over knowledge all constituted visible displays of authority.
Legitimate rule was made manifest by maintaining the physical world that
surrounded people as microcosms of the perfectly ordered universe. In
ever increasing scale, the palace, the capital, the empire, and the world
beyond could be ordered by the Son of Heaven.
4.3.4
Tributary Relations as Performance and Power
Tributary relations in East Asia operated against the background of a
shared set of beliefs that emphasized hierarchy, station, and normatively
regulated interactions between different ranks. Confucian principles were
critical, but other influences also played a role in this system. This conceptual order was continuously reinforced and reenacted in display.
Thus, paying tribute served as a ritual that instantiated the binary
relationship of superior-inferior, emperor-subject, and suzerain-vassal.
By adopting particular practices such as the Chinese calendar and script,
or by performing the rituals associated with paying tribute, one demonstrated a willingness to engage the emperor on the terms of the emperor.
The performance of the ritual reaffirmed the cosmological claims of the
emperor and thus served to legitimate his rule with his own subjects as
well as the suzerain claims of the emperor vis-à-vis neighboring states.
The performance acknowledged the legitimate authority of the emperor
in his domain.133
The tributary system thus fit with a Sino-centric worldview that
demonstrated Chinese hierarchy. This hierarchy “was projected in a
civilizing line departing from the central zone and extending into the
zones of the savages.”134 However, the ideological projection at the
same time allowed for a great diversity of actions to be classified as
“tributary” even though they differed in intent and consequence.
Tributary relations thus did not reflect a static or inflexible relationship.
The Vietnamese ruler could pay tribute to the Chinese emperor, whether
Tang, Song, Ming, or Qing, and still claim to be emperor in his own
domain. The Chinese emperor could pay tribute to the steppe nomads to
buy them off, and yet regard his behavior not as submission, but as
generosity bestowed on lesser peoples who had acknowledged the
133
134
See, e.g., the discussion by Yuanchong Wang in the ISSF Roundtable on Ji-young Lee’s
Chinese Hegemony (Lee 2017). Accessed at https://networks.h-net.org.
M. Wang 2012, 364. See also Y. Wang 2018, 11–12.
116
The East Asian Sino-centric Order
superiority of Chinese civilization. Actors sometimes instrumentally used
different interpretations of what tribute and tributary relations entailed.
For some they were relations of inferior to superior, and for others, they
resembled gift exchange, constituting a relation among equals.135
This diversity, however, also raises a complex analytic question. Can
one speak of a collective belief system if that belief system lends itself to
multiple interpretations? Similarly, can one speak of a tributary system if
roles could be inverted, or if all sorts of activities could be classified as
such? Can one thus reconcile a general cognitive script with diverse
interpretations?
I submit that local variations and instrumental interpretations could
be reconciled with the dominant belief system, the East Asian mentalité
collective, as long as such actions did not amount to an overt challenge
to the political and social order. No matter one’s interpretation or
strategic manipulation of collective beliefs, outward performance
remained critical. As James Hevia suggests, the ritual exchange
between emperor and other lords, including non-Confucian rulers,
constituted and reconstituted forms of political authority.136 To be
able to create the social context in which paying tribute was understood
was power, not merely a reflection of power. Chinese emperors insisted
on ritual performance to maintain the idea of superiority and to legitimate their rule. Thus, the emperor could “not allow any challenge to
his supreme position in the universe or to the hierarchical relationships
it was his duty to maintain.”137
Rituals served as institutional mechanisms to regulate society, and in
tributary relations, the interactions between states. As Loubna El Amine
suggests: “Rituals offer people the safety of tried, shared, and socially
guaranteed guidelines for action … Rituals, by clarifying positions and
social distinctions, contribute to the avoidance of conflict in society.”138
What held true for intrasocietal relations also held for interstate relations.
Ritual submission was important to maintain order. However, tributary
relations allowed for considerable flexibility, as long as polities did not
openly challenge the performative display of superior and inferior that fit
the specific context of a given interaction.
Luke Roberts’s account of performative scripts in Tokugawa Japan
provides a critical insight into this logic. Roberts was perplexed as to
why official Tokugawa documents contained all sorts of references to
how proper etiquette and law had been followed, whereas daimyo
135
136
Perdue notes the Russian differentiation of dan, which resembled the Chinese understanding of hierarchical relations, and podarki, which were gifts. Perdue 2009, 87.
Hevia 2009, 83. 137 Wang 1998, 309, 310. 138 El Amine 2015, 95, 99.
Gathering All under Heaven
117
documents provided vast contradictory evidence. How could it be that
even within the same document a daimyo lord was alive and of sound
mind in signing a deed regulating his succession while also acknowledging
that the daimyo had already been dead for more than fifty-five days prior
to the date when he supposedly signed the deed? Roberts concluded that
the shogunate, the “flamboyant state,” made exulted claims of authority
and populated its historical accounts with inaccuracies.
But this was far from meaningless window dressing. Instead, the
actions of the Tokugawa rulers and the lords who performed various
rituals and actions within this performative realm understood their role
within the system.
In fact, the “play” was the thing of government. The ability to command performance of duty – in the thespian sense, when actual performance of duty might be
lacking – was a crucial tool of Tokugawa power that effectively worked toward
preserving the peace in the realm …
Such performance of obedience helped make the Tokugawa regime one of the
most stable governments of the early modern world.139
The Tokugawa shogun could demand public performance while knowing the daimyo would not necessarily follow through in practice, but the
public performance was important for the reaffirmation of prestige and
shogunate authority, and both actors understood this to be the case.
There was a space for public display of subservience (omote) and a private
space in which informal behavior and discourse could operate (uchi). In
the latter sphere, informal arrangements were made regarding what
would or would not be tolerated. “Politics took the shape of asserting
compliance with Tokugawa demands in formal omote situations, while at
the same time informally negotiating actual needs.”140 The daimyo were
keen to document these informal arrangements, while the Tokugawa
wished to reaffirm the formal laws and rituals of their rule.141 “Double
meanings and multiple truths emerged because Tokugawa people were
139
140
141
Roberts 2012, 3. We might speculate that in this case, both actors might have understood that the obfuscation of the truth enabled the succession of the daimyo to proceed
without contestation.
Roberts 2012, 8.
Ji-Young Lee similarly suggests the importance of performance in the Tokugawa practice of alternative attendance (sankin kotai), which involved the procession of daimyo
lords during their travels to Edo to serve the shogun. She further suggests that the same
logic of displaying authority in this public way (thereby enhancing authority) applies to
Korean and Ryukyu embassies’ travel to Edo, suggesting they were coming to show
respect to the superior authority of the shogun, despite the fact that both Tokugawa and
Korean rulers fully understood that their relations were based on equality. Lee 2017,
160–61.
118
The East Asian Sino-centric Order
highly conscious of whom they were addressing and where they were
situated within a political realm.”142
Lisa Wedeen makes a similar argument in her analysis of publicly
expressed obeisance to the Assad regime in Syria. Many public expressions extolling the virtues of the regime were manifestly insincere and
phony. But as she rightly notes, those acts should not be dismissed as
irrelevant or indicative of the lack of power of the regime. Instead, even if
the participants and audience did not believe these public expressions to
be true, all participants were well aware that they were required to act as if
they were sincere.143 Performance, even if shallow and strategically
deployed, in fact served to demonstrate and reinforce the power of the
regime. Indeed, the ability to command performance – no matter the
individual’s own sentiments – might be a stronger indication of the
regime’s power than sincere expressions of loyalty.
One might add that in reenacting a prescribed script that script only
becomes more and more entrenched, regardless of whether the participants have fully internalized those beliefs or whether they view such
beliefs strategically. In this manner performative scripts become institutionalized and exercise significant causal effects.
Likewise, tributary relations must be understood as operating within a
script that allowed for considerable flexibility. As long as variations could
be accommodated within the dominant script, they posed no undue stress
on the interpolity order. Whatever the reality of the situation, as long as
the performative script could be maintained, the overarching order was
not in jeopardy.144 Actors worked within what Wittgenstein would call a
shared language game, and understood what behavior constituted a
permissible variation and what behavior did not. That language game,
that cognitive script, only faltered when the European powers started to
assert themselves by the late nineteenth century.
4.4
Multivocality and Interstate Relations
The Chinese cosmological claims to rule were far from unique. Indeed,
legitimating authority by the entwining of cosmological order and worldly
rule has been a ubiquitous and persistent theme through history.145
142
144
145
See Amy Stanley’s 2013 discussion of Roberts. 143 Wedeen 1998, 506.
Benedict makes a similar observation with regard to proper station and behavior among
family members in Japanese culture. “A person gives all deference to those who outrank
him in assigned ‘proper place,’ … no matter whether or not they are the really dominant
persons in the group … The façade is not changed to suit the facts of dominance. It
remains inviolable.” Benedict 1946, 56.
Eliade 1959.
Gathering All under Heaven
119
European rulers also integrated divine precepts with political organization and social structure. German kings sought to create an empire that
was to be “Holy,” “Roman,” and an “Empire.” Rituals, symbols, and
architecture were all marshaled to make the emperor’s authority manifest.
The invocation of Roman imperial rule referred to the last empire before
the coming of Christ. The imperial cross and the sacred lance were
connected to the Christian tradition of salvation. The imperial orb,
allegedly containing soil from the four corners of the world, signified
Christ’s dominion over the globe.
But just as the imperial claims of the Holy Roman Empire did not
reflect political realities in Europe, so, too, we must understand that
claims by Chinese emperors to rule “all under heaven” could be reconciled with the fact that their rule did not extend beyond the empire’s
physical frontiers. There was no logical contradiction between the ideological claim to universal authority and the material, geographical limits
to the emperor’s rule. As Yuanchong Wang demonstrates, to understand
the logic of the Chinese imperial organization one must distinguish the
territorial empire from the politico-cultural empire.146
Consequently, universalist claims did not entail political insulation
from other polities, nor did it imply a self-contained economic system.
The Chinese tributary system allowed for flexible political relations both
with those considered within the Confucian “core” as well as those
beyond. The alleged insularity attributed to universal empire is belied
by China’s extensive trading relations, including with South and
Southeast Asia, which were marginal parties to the tributary system, at
best.
Even Korea, Vietnam, and Japan, countries considered to be the core
tributary states to China, demonstrated considerable elasticity in how
they interacted with imperial China. While a Sino-centric reading of the
tributary system suggests a clear hierarchy with China at the center of the
spider’s web, actual relations showed considerable variation.
4.4.1
Imperial China and Vietnam
The strict sense of hierarchy, the rigid application of superior and inferior,
that one might wish to read into tributary rituals requires revision even
with regard to the smaller tributaries. Although Vietnam, as Korea, is
considered to exemplify the tributary relation, here, too, the evidence
suggests a more flexible relationship rather than a static rank order. For
one, the Vietnamese ruler would at times use the term “emperor” to
146
Y. Wang 2018, 10.
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The East Asian Sino-centric Order
denote his own superiority. But in relations with the Chinese Empire, the
title of lord or king would be used.147
The Tang (618–907) and Song (960–1279) dynasties had been largely
satisfied with the ritual acknowledgment of their suzerainty over
Southeast Asia. The Mongol dynasty, the Yuan, by contrast set out to
actually conquer the region. Ill-suited for such campaigns, given topography and climate, the Mongol forces achieved little success in Vietnam.
After the fall of the Yuan, the first Ming emperor (the Hongwu
emperor) explicitly sought to return to the earlier foreign policy. “He
avoided displays of force, demands for submission, and attempts to assert
indirect control over vassal states. He sought, instead, to obtain their
symbolic acknowledgment of China’s cosmological centrality and their
acknowledgement that his succession to power was legitimate.”148 The
Ming themselves had come to power as a rebellious movement and were
concerned about being accepted as the legitimate heirs to the Yuan.
Moreover, they were aware that although the Mongols had withdrawn
to the North, they remained a formidable and unpredictable power.
Consequently, only a few years into the Ming dynasty’s reign, Hongwu
expounded a policy of nonaggression to the South and decreed in the
Ancestral Injunctions of 1373:
The overseas foreign countries like Annan [Vietnam], Champa, Korea, Siam,
Liuqiu [Ryukyu Islands], [the countries of the] Western Oceans [South India]
and Eastern Oceans [Japan], and the various small countries of the southern man
[barbarians] are separated from us by mountains and seas and far away in a corner
… their peoples would not usefully serve us if incorporated [into the empire]. If
they were so unrealistic as to disturb our borders, it would be unfortunate for
them. If they gave us no trouble and we moved troops to fight them unnecessarily,
it would be unfortunate for us.149
In the final version of these injunctions, fifteen countries were designated
as countries that were not to be invaded. Among those added were
Cambodia, Srivijaya on Sumatra, Java and other islands in the
Indonesian archipelago that were vassals of the Majahapit (Javanese)
Empire.
Despite the injunctions, the early Ming dynasty got embroiled in
Vietnamese politics, even though Vietnam shared key cultural traits;
such as the use of Chinese characters and Confucian-style institutions.
147
148
149
Lam 1968, 271. Similarly, the Koryŏ ruler would sometimes be deemed emperor in his
domain but king when addressing the Chinese emperor.
G. Wang 1998, 303. Rituals were elaborate but did not demand actual submission.
G. Wang 1998, 311–12. While the Ming sought to avoid foreign entanglements in
Southeast Asia, conflicts among the Southeast Asian polities themselves were ever
present. See also Yang 2011, 290.
Gathering All under Heaven
121
The more assertive style of the second Ming emperor, the Yongle (Yunglo) emperor, and the usurpation of rule in Vietnam led to the dispatch of
Chinese forces. The Ming forces, however, met with ignominious defeat,
after which the Vietnamese rulers turned on Champa (the kingdom that
occupied the southern region of contemporary Vietnam).150
The nature of Sino-Vietnamese relations thus fluctuated with the relative strength of each polity as well as the domestic politics within each.
Tributary relations were arguably more robust when the balance of power
favored the Chinese Empire and Vietnam was correspondingly weak.
Vietnam could be subject to outright coercion and even invasion by its
northern neighbor, particularly when relative weakness combined with
internal turmoil. “Strong Chinese rulers found the source of their authority both in leading by virtuous example and in employing coercive force.
Weak Vietnamese leaders would not openly reject this Chinese position of
universal superiority, thus avoiding direct confrontation.”151
The Ming emperors had other material reasons to maintain a noninterventionist policy with Vietnam and Southeast Asia more broadly. The
vast expeditions to Southeast and South Asia, and even the coast of Africa
under Zheng He (Cheng Ho), had been vastly expensive. Seven expeditions consisting of 40–300 ships had been dispatched during 1405–31
with few gains to show.152 With more existential threats looming from
Central Asia and Manchuria, domestic opposition to the Ming adventures in the South altered policy.
But the relationship should not be understood as simply the result of
material asymmetry. At times when both China and Vietnam were strong,
the latter still adhered to paying tribute, sometimes with an eye on trading
privileges, sometimes to gain external legitimation. Conversely, from the
Chinese perspective, conformity with rituals that expressed the empire’s
civilizational superiority sufficed to maintain domestic and interstate
stability without additional demonstrations of power.
Under those mutually understood principles, the last major war
between Vietnam and China occurred during the Ming invasion in the
1420s. The Ming principle of nonintervention and the principle that
tribute was not for imperial profit informed Ming and subsequent Qing
policy for the next centuries.
With Vietnamese ritual submission, the Ming court could claim it did
not need to occupy Vietnam. Given that the Vietnamese rulers asked for
imperial investiture, the Vietnamese rulers could be regarded as no different from the Ming administrators in the empire proper. Conversely,
150
152
G. Wang 1998, 308, 314–17.
G. Wang 1998, 320–21.
151
Anderson 2013, 264.
122
The East Asian Sino-centric Order
Vietnamese rulers could oblige the Chinese while maintaining de facto
autonomy.153 Tributary performance achieved both states’ objectives
with no need to test their respective status by material challenges or
even war.
Three centuries later, the Qing officials would similarly argue that
they had no need to seek formal control over Vietnam. After the Qing
intervened on behalf of the deposed Lê emperor of Vietnam, the alleged
usurper Huê defeated their forces. The new Vietnamese ruler, however,
had little incentive to keep the conflict going and offered to pay tribute
to the Qing emperor. Since Huê offered to pay tribute, the Chinese
could maintain the fiction that this case was similar to imperial installation of a Chinese official. The situation was thus defused to both actors’
satisfaction.154
As Brantly Womack suggests, the asymmetry of material power
between Vietnam and China was certainly there, but deference did not
equate with dominance.155 Both sides had incentives to maintain a ritualized rank position. Likewise Fanyin Zhou in his analysis of Chinese
relations with Burma and Korea notes that the system did not reflect a
unilaterally imposed status quo but was instead based on a shared understanding that maintained stability for both parties at minimum cost.156
The tributary system thus did not simply constitute a convenient cover
for “Real-politik” calculations. Distributions of material power created
permissive conditions to insist on rank and hierarchy, but the ritual
system had significant consequences as well. In the sixteenth century,
when Vietnam had declined and Burma was the dominant force in
Southeast Asia, the Ming nevertheless continued to maintain the fiction
that Burma constituted an aboriginal office, fictitiously under the jurisdiction of the Ming governor of Yunnan. Vietnam, by contrast, was
recognized as an autonomous polity, which recognized Chinese
suzerainty.157
Although critical of previous accounts that viewed the system as imposing a strict and static hierarchy of Chinese “foreign” relations, scholars as
153
155
156
157
Anderson 2013, 267. 154 Lam 1968, 173, 179.
Hevia presents a critique of Womack, arguing that he imposes a model of instrumental
rationality and western analytic concepts. Hevia 2009, 75–76. Nevertheless, I would
argue that Womack’s reading of the relation comports well with a more cultural understanding of flexibility and constant reconstitution of the Sino-Vietnamese relation.
Fangyin 2011, 147–78. Note that, although he uses equilibrium theory to explain the
outcome as minimizing costs, he also suggests an affinity with constructivist arguments
and says that the Chinese emperor insisted on adherence to the norms inherent in the
relation, “not because of force or considerations of costs and benefits.” Fangyin
2011, 175.
G. Wang 1998, 330.
Gathering All under Heaven
123
James Hevia, John Wills, and James Anderson recognize the significance
of the tributary system. As Anderson aptly suggests:
As the defender of this system, the Chinese court itself was under the constraints
of the ideal order it espoused. The hierarchical whole of the tribute system, of
which each participating tributary state was a part, also encircled the Chinese
court. Because the ultimate authority of the Chinese emperor expressed itself in
the achievement of regional peace and harmony, the emperor needed the regular
performance of tribute missions from each participating state to promulgate his
own legitimacy.158
4.4.2
Korea: Loyal Tributary and Small Central Civilization
Sino-Korean relations are especially interesting because the Koryŏ kingdom (918–1392) and the Chosŏ n dynasty (1392–1897) embraced the
Confucian legacy most ardently of all states considered to be part of the
tributary system. Korea saw itself squarely placed in the Zhonghua
(Chunghwa in Korean) civilizational order, with China at its center.
The early Koryŏ kingdom paid tribute to the Liao, as well as to the
Mongols. After the Mongols established themselves in China as the
Yuan dynasty, they took over Chinese terminology, referring to Koryŏ
as the “son in law.”159
When the Ming came to power, they were at first apprehensive of
Koryŏ loyalty. The first Ming emperor, Hongwu, insisted on a strict
demarcation of the boundary with Korea given fears of Jurchen
(Manchu) and Korean collusion against the Ming. To make matters
worse, internal succession struggles in the Koryŏ kingdom led the Ming
to refuse investiture to the usurpers who had murdered king Kongmin.
These internal conflicts ultimately led to the fall of the Koryŏ kingdom
and the rise of the Chosŏ n dynasty. Given that the latter were usurpers,
they, too, required Ming investiture, which the Ming were reluctant to
convey.160
Internal conflicts among the Ming, however, altered the situation.
Hongwu had designated his grandson Jianwen (Chien-wen) as his heir,
but he was soon challenged by one of his uncles, Zhu Di (the later Yongle
emperor). Both emperor Jianwen and Zhu Di sought support from Korea
to bolster their own chances at the Ming throne. Each of them “needed
Korea’s help and had to accept the Koreans’ assurances of loyalty and
support at face value … Although the Chinese government depended on
158
160
Anderson 2013, 277. 159 Clark 1998, 272; Brose 2006, 333, 341.
Clark 1998, 274–76, 285. Chosŏ n Korea had to inform the Ming of each change in
rulership for legitimation and obtain Ming documents to validate the legitimacy. Rawski
2015, 145. See also Lee 2017, 84–93.
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The East Asian Sino-centric Order
allies and tributaries to honor their agreements, it especially did so when a
new dynasty was consolidating its power in China.”161 Thus, both the
Korean and the Chinese dynasties could benefit from external allies to
support their authority against internal rivals. The tributary relation
reinforced both the Chinese emperor’s legitimacy and that of the
Korean king.
After the initial tumultuous years, both sides settled in a regularized
pattern of tributary relations, with investiture only denied very rarely in
the ensuing centuries. As Ji-Young Lee shows, tributary relations were
only destabilized during periods of domestic turmoil with political rivals
jockeying for position in Korea. Focusing on sixteen investiture cases, Lee
suggests that only four raised issues, with one case leading to rejection and
the three others resulting in delays.162
Korea typically sent about three tribute missions a year, consisting of
horses, precious metals, and slaves, and eunuchs. The Ming sent far
fewer embassies to Korea, indicating its supremacy to the junior partner.
The Chosŏ n adopted the Ming legal code in 1394, and the Ming and the
Chosŏ n cooperated in military campaigns against the Manchurian
Jurchen.163
The unification of Japan under Toyotomo Hideyoshi and the subsequent invasion of Korea in 1592 ended the relative interstate peace in East
Asia. Hideyoshi demanded that Korea submit as vassal to him. To repel
the invasion, the Chosŏ n dynasty sought assistance from the Ming. The
failure of a second Japanese invasion in 1597, a setback solidified with
Hideyoshi’s death in 1598, ended the Japanese threat to the Chosŏ n and
the Ming. However, the Japanese campaigns had severely weakened the
Ming to the benefit of the Manchu who attacked Korea several times in
the decades thereafter.164
When the Manchu replaced the Ming dynasty in 1644, Chosŏ n scholars regarded them as barbarians, referring to the concept of Chunghwa
(Zhonghua), the world centeredness of Chinese civilization. Those that
had not fully appropriated Confucian philosophy were regarded as yi,
barbarians. In the Korean view, Chunghwa thus had a civilizational
connotation rather than a territorial one. With the demise of the Ming,
and the ascendance of the Qing, this civilizational legacy had fallen to the
161
162
163
164
Clark 1998, 278, 279.
Lee 2013, 323–24. Also see J.-Y. Lee 2017. She demonstrates how tributary relations
were influenced by domestic politics in Korea as well as Japan.
Clark 1998, 281, 284, 289–91. Rawski notes that Japan and Korea adopted the Chinese
legal code, but with local variations. Rawski 2015, 230.
Kang 2010a, 93–98; Clark 1998, 295–98.
Gathering All under Heaven
125
Chosŏ n. Consequently, they viewed their dynasty and Korea as the
Sojunghwa, or the small central civilization.165
With the Qing in power, the Korean rulers nevertheless had to submit
to tribute. However, “the Koreans continued, nonetheless, to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Ming dynasty long after 1644, retaining the
Ming calendar and Ming-style institutions.”166
Given these ideological differences between the Chosŏ n dynasty and
the Manchu Qing dynasty, some Korean scholars of that period, such as
Yi Chinghwi (1731–97), argued that parts of Manchuria that had fallen to
earlier Chinese dynasties should be reclaimed. Although Koreans had
regarded this territory as part of Korea, they had not insisted on this
reclamation with Han Chinese dynasties. However, with the barbarian
Manchus now in power, the standard of civilization had passed to the
Chosŏ n ruler, and he was thus entitled to demand the return of parts of
Manchuria. “When the Han, the Tang, or the Ming had been in control
over Liaodong, he did not consider the territory to be alienated from
Chosŏ n, as those dynasties were also representatives of Chunghwa. Only
now that the territory was under the control of the usurping Qing, Yi
argued, should Chosŏ n reassert its claims.”167 The distribution of relative
power between the Chinese Empire and Korea had not changed. But the
identity of the Chinese imperial dynasty had been transformed.
One might have expected military conflicts between Qing and Chosŏ n
to be more frequent if the lack of cultural affinity fully explained the
occurrence of peace and war. However, the substantial differences in
military power would make overt conflict a fool’s errand. Moreover, as
we have seen, the Qing made substantial efforts to acquire legitimacy in
the eyes of the Confucian Han elites.168 Thus, rather than challenge the
Qing outright, the Koreans maintained their Ming institutions, and “used
tribute to purchase noninterference by the Ch’ing [Qing] court, and
chose to live in quiet isolation until the Japanese opened the peninsula
with the Treaty of Kangwha in 1876.”169
To rigidly juxtapose cultural and ideational explanations with material,
realist accounts misses the point. Cultural leverage could be deployed
side by side, or even in lieu of the exercise of force, to achieve objectives.
Material balances of power certainly had to be taken into account, but
cultural perspectives equally influenced foreign policy. Both factors
affected Korean relations with the Qing and the Tokugawa shogunate.
165
166
168
169
Lee 2010, 305–18; Bohnet 2014, 199–201.
Clark 1998, 273; Lee 2010, 311; Suzuki 2009, 51. 167 Bohnet 2014, 204.
Besides engaging in Confucian rituals when they assumed power in Beijing, the Qing
also adopted the Ming practice of receiving ritual embassies. Crossley 2008, 602.
Clark 1998, 300.
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The East Asian Sino-centric Order
Following the premise of “serving the great” (sadae), the Chosŏ n rulers
could send tributary missions, receive investiture, use the Chinese calendar and conform with diplomatic protocol under both the Ming and
Qing. But, following the ascent of the Qing emperors, they developed
their own view of being the true bearer of Confucian civilization. Chosŏ n
collective consciousness thus developed in such a manner to refract
Chinese claims of cultural superiority in order to develop a Korean selfidentity.
With Japan, diplomatic relations were conducted on the basis of equality (kyorin) given that the Tokugawa shogunate was deemed culturally
inferior by the Chosŏ n rulers.170 Culture informed policy and disposition.
From their side the Japanese rulers increasingly refused public displays of
submission to the Chinese court and Japan enhanced its own sense of
identity with a focus on the Japanese emperor. During the Tokugawa
shogunate, tributary missions ceased altogether. The heavenly sovereign,
Tenno, formed its own center and started to demand such recognition
from Korea.
4.4.3
Japan – Tributary or Equal?
Like their Chinese counterparts, the Japanese emperors also claimed a
semidivine status. Although not strictly speaking a god himself, the
Japanese emperor was a conduit between the sacred and the profane
due to the mythological origins of the imperial dynasty. For example,
although empress Suiko (593 to 628 CE) adopted the title of heavenly
sovereign (Tenno), this did not imply that she, or other imperial monarchs, were to be considered true gods. Instead, it was intended to underscore Japan’s equality with China. Indeed, the title “emperor” alone
would suggest an incompatibility with recognizing another ruler as
superior.171 Consequently, Japanese shoguns thus did not accept investiture from the Chinese emperor, except for the Ashikaga shogun,
Yoshimitsu (1358–1408).
Earlier scholarship suggested that the Japanese political system isolated
itself entirely from the outside world, particularly during the Tokugawa
period.172 This “closure” until the Meiji restoration was thought to
perpetuate internal hierarchy at the expense of external relations. But,
as Ronald Toby has noted, that view cannot stand. Instead, he argues for
a different perspective “that places Japan at the center of the world as
170
171
172
Lee 2010, 305, 310, 311; J.-Y. Lee 2013, 319; Rawski 2015, 57.
Yuan-kang Wang notes that Japan had little contact with medieval China and was not
really part of a Sino-centric system. Wang 2013, 227.
Bendix thus talks of a policy of seclusion. Bendix 1978, 436, 451.
Gathering All under Heaven
127
Japanese conceived it, rather than at the margins of a China-centered
world or beyond the periphery of a Eurocentric one.”173 Although Japan’s
Act of Seclusion (1636) limited exchanges with Western powers, with the
partial exemption for the Dutch, the objective was not isolation but a
defensive measure against Western expansion.
As a result, Japan only imperfectly fit with the idealized Sino-centric
order. Instead, it tried to place itself at the nexus of an East Asian trading
system, with its own emperor at the center and its own tributary system,
albeit with limited success.174 With the ascent of Tokugawa Ieyasu, a
discourse emerged,
[T]hat claimed to place Japan at the center of a regional and international world
order. However little recognition this notion of Japan as Central Kingdom
received from others abroad – very little indeed, unlike Chinese pretensions to
being the Central Kingdom – the notion of Japanese centrality was critical to the
establishment and the maintenance of domestic legitimacy … and the international politics of Japanese imperialism and expansion.175
Irreconcilable with China’s insistence on its superiority and centrality,
Japan withdrew from the Chinese model of a world order, and no embassies tributary missions were sent to Beijing after the mid-sixteenth
century.176
4.5
Conclusion
Understood as a complex of shared understanding and meaning, tributary relations acted as a lingua franca. They created a shared script, a
common knowledge, that facilitated mutual understanding, which could
entail benign or less benign relations, but overall provided actors with a
common frame of reference. Thus, adopting Chinese written characters,
173
174
175
176
Toby 1991, xvi. Rawski similarly argues that foreign contact continued, and that even
the daimyo themselves conducted foreign relations. Rawski 2015, 52–53.
Perdue 2009, 88. Interestingly, the Japanese instantiated their claims to be autonomous
and legitimate rulers by invoking the writings of Ouyang Xiu (Ou-yang Hsiu), the Song
poet and statesman who argued for three classical criteria of legitimation: unification of
the country, good governance and the increase of prosperity, and rule over three generations (the latter had to be liberally interpreted by the first Tokugawa). Toby 1991, 60.
In practice, multiple tributary systems interacted with each other. Suzuki 2009, 49.
Toby 1991, xviii; see also 58–60. The Japanese ruler thus recognized the Chinese
emperor as the “Son of Heaven of Great Ming” but claimed the title of “Son of
Heaven in Kyoto” for himself, thereby denying the Chinese universalist claims. Toby,
furthermore, suggests a useful distinction between immanent order and the ideological
assertion of such an order. Toby 1991, xix. See also Rawski 2015, 56: “In the seventeenth century, the Tokugawa shogunate attempted to create a Japan-centered world
order, which directly challenged the Chinese claim to regional hegemony.”
Toby 1991, 172; Rawski 2015, 40, 47.
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The East Asian Sino-centric Order
language, and calendar conveyed a willingness to be part of this script.
Even those beyond the immediate influence of the Chinese imperial
dynasty understood the ritual involved with paying tribute and symbolic
submission. Submission served both to legitimate the Chinese emperor
within his domain and to legitimate those who submitted.
As Clifford Geertz suggests, actions should be interpreted within the
web of meaning understood by the actors themselves. What appears as
inconsistent or contradictory in our views might appear less so to the
protagonists themselves. For example, the fact that the Chinese dynasties
on occasion had to pay tribute to the nomadic and seminomadic steppe
polities to the north and west would seem in direct contradiction of any
claim to supreme authority by the Chinese emperor. Even the powerful
Song Empire thus paid tribute to the Liao. While the Chinese avoided the
term gong (tribute), the Liao certainly understood it as such.177 One
might even argue that this empirical fact weakens any conceptualization
of tributary relations as a coherent system. What could it mean if these
relations fluctuated all the time? How could one ascribe any causal effect
to the Chinese tributary system if the emperor himself had to pay tribute?
However, understood as a script, as a set of performances that allowed
actors to invoke multiple and diverse narratives, the apparent disparities
can be reconciled. Engaging in tributary relations created a performative
script with layers of meanings discernible as a shared code among the
actors. Despite diverse interpretations and local adaptations, there was a
shared cultural framework. Unity interwove with diversity. “The
Tokugawa, Chosŏ n and Qing all pursued cultural agendas based on
shared symbolic repertoires to elaborate on their differences.”178
When the Chinese emperor had to pay tribute to powerful steppe
empires, the court chronicles would classify these as gifts or favorable
trade relations that the benign ruler had decided to bestow upon other
polities. Rhetorical adroitness thus turned the harsh reality of imperial
submission into a positive affirmation of Chinese superiority.
In other instances, when the leaders of the steppe paid tribute to the
emperor, the tributary missions were classified as subjection to the superior Chinese civilization. In reality, however, such tribute missions by
supposedly subject polities might actually constitute demands for subsidies and trade, resembling extortion, rather than constituting recognition of supreme Chinese authority. For instance, the Oirat Mongols sent
ever larger tribute missions to the Ming Court, which the emperor, in his
177
178
Y.-K. Wang 2013, 217. The Song also paid tribute to the Xi Xia and the Southern Song
paid tribute to the Jin. The Jin classified the Song as “vassals.” Y.-K. Wang 2013, 222–
26; Goodrich 1969, 164–69.
Rawski 2015, 102.
Gathering All under Heaven
129
role of benevolent ruler, had to reward with greater benefits than were
received.
But again, rhetorical manipulation allowed the Chinese chroniclers to
accommodate these demands in their preferred narrative. The favorable
trade relations bestowed by the emperor were thus classified as benevolence toward nomads who had come to “pay tribute.”179 The practice
thus served the objectives of both actors:
Tributary missions were an approved channel for providing subsidies and trade to
frontier peoples … China gained the ideological satisfaction of treating envoys as if
they were from subject states … The appearance of a sinocentric world order … was
thereby maintained while the realities of power politics were handled flexibly.180
Performance mattered for the maintenance of a given societal and political order. Adhering to a given ritual in the relevant context signaled both
an understanding of the relationship and also a willingness to respect that
specific order.
The very flexibility of the system gave it both its durability and broad
applicability across a range of situations. Yuri Pines similarly suggests that
the political culture was “full of paradoxes and tensions” that contributed
“toward flexibility of the empires’ functioning, its adaptability to a variety
of domestic and foreign challenges, and its ultimate durability.”181
Consequently, the tributary system should not be understood as a static
and strict hierarchy. Instead, as Perdue suggests, gong, which he argues is
the proper term for tribute, should be seen as providing “a common
language of communication between states and peoples with widely
diverse cultural and political practices.”182 Thus, contrary to critics who
are skeptical of the tributary system as an analytical framework for the
historical study of Asian international relations, I suggest that the concept
should be understood as a script that allowed for multiple and diverse
interpretations by the participants themselves.
Confucian doctrine played a key role in the maintenance of the tributary system. The proper adherence to rituals could achieve harmony, and
thus bring about the stability and order that were so central to Confucian
theory.183 Publicly acknowledging the superiority and suzerainty of the
emperor naturally enhanced the legitimacy of the emperor. Conversely,
investiture by the emperor confirmed the legitimacy of the indigenous
ruler who thereby also gained Chinese nonintervention. The Chinese
179
182
183
Barfield 1989, 4, 240–42. 180 Barfield 1989, 248. 181 Pines 2012, 5.
Perdue 2009, 86.
Confucius states in the Analects (1:12) that rites are critical for achieving harmony.
Confucius, The Analects, trans. James Legge. Accessed through Project Guttenberg at
www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3330; see also El Amine 2015, 99.
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The East Asian Sino-centric Order
emperor in turn could reconcile the reality of autonomous independent
states with the imagined cosmography that positioned China at the center
of the world and the emperor as the divine conduit to encompass “all
under heaven.”
Paying tribute conveyed benefits but also duties on both parties. While
tributary states had to perform certain rituals, such as the kowtow, and
deliver specified goods or even people, the emperor incurred obligations
as well. In this system, hegemonic relations did not simply constitute
unidirectional relations between the powerful state, unconstrained in its
actions, and lesser states, relegated to abject subservience.184 The less
powerful had some room to maneuver and to place constraints on the
dominant actor.
Micro-level social organization and macro-level political organization
paralleled each other in multiple binary positions: father-son; seniorjunior; emperor-populace; tributee and tributary. Indeed, the tributary
relations between states were often phrased as familial ties. All of these
relations conveyed a particular rank order that came with expectations for
proper conduct by superior and inferior. Juniors were to respect their
elders; children should obey their parents; the living should honor their
forbearers. Those so honored were in turn obligated to those who had
paid their respects, or expected to protect their inferiors. Subservience
could thus be inverted to mutual obligation. At a minimum, the recipients, whether Chinese emperors or Japanese rulers, had to demonstrate
their generosity and largesse for the supplicant lesser “sons” as would
befit a father of a household.185
In this sense, the tributary system must be understood in the context of
shared beliefs and understandings.186 I echo Catherine Bell’s discussion
of ritual and practice in hegemonic relations.
People reproduce relationships of power and domination, but not in a direct,
automatic, or mechanistic way; rather, they reproduce them through their
184
185
186
In this regard, it is worth noting that the Confucian texts do not legitimize despotic
government. As D. C. Lau notes for Mencius, one of the key Confucianists, “the
Emperor existed for the sake of the people, and not the other way round.” Mencius
1970, 39. Superiority and rank entailed commensurate obligations.
As with ritualized gift exchange, the recipient of the gift simultaneously enters into an
obligation. The need to reciprocate in kind, or even to excel in generosity in response to
the gift giver, thus simultaneously empowers the original gift giver. The latter could
obtain leverage over the recipient – in this case, even over the Chinese ruler. On the logic
of gift exchange, see Emerson 1976.
I thus disagree with behavioralist analyses that argue that the self-understanding of
actors is irrelevant to understanding the nature of the tributary system. For such an
analysis, see, e.g., Khong 2013, 36.
Gathering All under Heaven
131
particular construal of those relations, a construal that affords the actor the sense
of a sphere of action, however minimal.187
The collective beliefs that together informed East Asian society originated from various sources. Although Confucianism was a critical component of the Sino-centric order, influences from Central and South Asia
permeated the cultural frames through which elites and societies understood the world around them. This cultural ensemble informed conceptions of interiority and exteriority, legitimate and illegitimate authority,
the civilized and uncivilized.
Without an understanding of Chinese civilization as broader than the
set of Confucian values held by Han Chinese, we might also fail to
understand how rulers from diverse ethnicities and polities could claim
this civilizational status as their own. Regardless whether one dates the
tributary system to the Ming and Qing dynasties, or to the earlier Tang
and Song, or even two millennia ago, one must also recognize that the
core of the system was at times greatly influenced by numerous groups
from Central Asia such as the Liao and the Xi Xia empires. Indeed, the
Mongol (Yuan) dynasty, and the Qing (Manchu) were not Han Chinese
at all, and yet they constitute “Chinese” dynasties.
Consequently, various dynasties, Han Chinese as well as non-Han
Chinese, could assert to be the center of civilization, gathering all under
heaven, and yet also recognize the reality of independent polities.
Imperial China had limited incentives to establish formal empire over
less powerful states such as Korea and Vietnam, with the latter offering
tribute and thus reinforcing the emperor’s projection of centrality. The
less powerful states in turn obtained trade benefits and domestic legitimation from the Chinese emperor.
Therefore, even when non-Han rulers from outside the Central Plains
conquered the existing dynasty, they were strongly motivated to maintain
the system by inserting themselves into the culture of their predecessors.
The narrative of continuous Chinese civilization was thus maintained by
the Han bureaucracy as well as the non-Han invaders. The interests of
rulers and states could be attained by flexible adjustment, with little need
to engage in hegemonic wars to challenge the underlying norms and
principles of the system.
Criteria of inclusion and exclusion, who was a member of the relevant
community and who not were thus malleable as well.
187
Bell 2009, 84. See also Bourdieu on the practices and strategies of gift giving. Gift giving
can, for example, constitute dependence, signal insults, and create obligations. Gift
giving can “have completely different meanings at different times.” Bourdieu 1977, 6;
see also 5, 14–15.
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The East Asian Sino-centric Order
The East was never identical with the West. In the former‘s universe, cosmologies
made the distinctions between inside and outside, subject and object, and order
and chaos in greatly more relative and flexible terms, chiefly (but not only) for the
purpose of forging mutual relations out of contrary oppositions.188
Modernity and the development of the Westphalian state system have
defined our view of inside and outside in far less flexible terms. Hence,
sets of behaviors and performances in early modern East Asia might
appear to us as inconsistent and puzzling, while they were well understood by the participants themselves. How the East Asian polities that
were part of the tributary system dealt with the encroachment of the
Western colonial powers and the Westphalian state model forms the
next subject of discussion.
188
M. Wang 2012, 365.
5
The East Asian Interstate Society
and the Westphalian System
If we follow our present plan and act in terms of the treaties and do not
let the barbarians exceed them in the slightest, if on the surface we show
sincerity and friendship while secretly carrying out a “loose rein” policy,
then, in a few years, even if they make random demands still they will not
suddenly cause us any great harm.
Prince Gong, 18611
For Sino-speak partisans history works in reverse, with the Sinocentric
neo-tributary system now challenging the Westphalian system to rewrite
the wrongs of China’s Century of National Humiliation (1840–1949).
William Callahan
5.1
Cultural Clashes: Two Logics of Order
The demise of the Sino-centric order is commonly attributed to the
relative decline of China and the incompatibility of the Sino-centric vision
with the Westphalian system of territorial states. According to that view,
the logic of the tributary system, with its differentiation of rank and
hierarchy, was not compatible with the principle of sovereign territoriality
that emerged in Europe. Contrary to the juridical equality of states in the
Westphalian system, the Chinese dynasty claimed to stand at the center of
a hierarchical system with its mandate from heaven. Consequently, as the
conduit between the sacred and the profane, the emperor could not
recognize other rulers as equals. And, furthermore, as ruler of “all
under heaven,” he could not acquiesce to territorial limits to his authority.
China’s relative decline determined the outcome of this clash of contrasting conceptual frames, so this narrative argues. Economic and intellectual stagnation decreased the Qing dynasty’s ability to maintain its
1
From the recommendation by Prince Gong (Kung), Guiliang (Kuei-liang), and Wenxiang
(Wen-hsiang) to Emperor Xianfeng (Hsien-feng) advocating the establishment of the
Zongli Yamen (Tsungli Yamen, the Foreign Office) as a means to deal with the Western
colonial powers. Adopting international (barbarian) law would thus serve to curtail the
barbarians themselves. Cranmer-Byng 1972, 44.
133
134
The East Asian Sino-centric Order
centrality in East Asian politics. The claim of absolute supremacy could
only be maintained as long as the tributary system operated within relatively self-contained parameters, that is, when it dealt with East Asian
states, and to lesser extent with Southeast Asia, or its north and western
(semi) nomadic polities.
However, Western expansion challenged Chinese legitimation directly.
While the Dutch and Portuguese were too weak to demand conformity to
European views, and thus had to submit to paying tribute in order to trade,
the British by the nineteenth century were far less willing to perform
ritualistic submission, let alone acknowledge Chinese superiority. China’s
decline in relative power, combined with views of a world order that
contravened Westphalian concepts, sealed the fate of the Sino-centric
system. Imperial China was too weak to impose its preferred order, and
its inability to switch cognitive frameworks doomed it to oblivion. Similarly,
Chosŏ n Korea proved unable to change its collective imagination and fell to
Japan. Only Japan managed to switch cognitive frameworks and adopted
Western practices in order to catch up to the West and be recognized as a
“civilized” state. In the views of some scholars, the external pressure by the
West on East Asia amounted to “the most impressive achievement of the
international concert: a sustained and developing collective action on
behalf of international society.”2
I argue in this chapter that narrative is erroneous. The alleged incompatibility between East Asian conceptions of international order and the
Westphalian system is overstated. While the Qing dynasty indeed made
universalist claims, justifying its authority to govern “all under heaven,”
one must distinguish the politico-cultural empire, the collective imagination of empire, from the actual territorial claims. Likewise, the view of
intellectual stagnation in China is incorrect. East Asian polities were far
more flexible than sometimes acknowledged, and made significant
adjustments to accommodate the demands from the West. Indeed, they
adopted many of the practices that informed international relations of the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In order to meet the pressures
from the Western colonial empires, the East Asian polities adopted
administrative practices from Europe and the United States, and engaged
in state-building practices. It is well known that Japan in particular aimed
to mimic the West in order to catch up with the colonial powers.
However, the Qing Empire as well went through a profound transformation as it sought to join the club of “civilized states” as defined by the
European and American powers. Chosŏ n Korea, however, found
2
Bull and Watson 1984, 31.
The East Asian Interstate Society and the Westphalian System
135
adjustment more difficult, torn between its status as vassal to the Qing
and encroachment by Japan.
This chapter starts with briefly surveying the arguments that intellectual stagnation and a myopic worldview caused Chinese decline and
eventual collapse. Instead, I suggest that China engaged in intellectual
adjustment to meet the global pressures caused by the imperial colonial
powers. This intellectual adjustment and change in the collective imagination also carried over into the political realm. The late Qing dynasty
thereby actively sought to reconcile its older notion of hierarchy and
tributary relations with the framework advanced by the West. The alleged
incompatibility of East Asian conceptions of order partially finds its roots
in the narratives of nineteenth-century international legal scholarship. As
the West moved to a particular view of what constituted a “normal” state,
the denial of such normality to Eastern polities provided the pretense for
colonial encroachment by Europeans and Americans.
5.2
The Alleged Stagnation and Insularity of the East
Many explanations of the demise of the tributary system argue that the
system collapsed due to the weakness and myopia of the Qing Empire.
They suggest in particular that the Qing were unable or unwilling to
adjust their collective imagination to the international system advanced
by the West.
First, some accounts for China’s relative decline stress intellectual
stagnation. Chinese conceptual bias impeded the acquisition of knowledge and interests in other regions. Although acquainted with other
regions from time immemorial – the Silk Road had after all operated for
millennia, and, despite the Chinese naval ability to traverse vast expansions of oceans (one need merely recall the fleets of Zheng He) – the
Chinese did not systematically develop an intellectual interest in those
areas.
The lack of geographic knowledge presents a telling example in such
accounts. Centuries after the European maritime expansion had pushed
into East Asia, Chinese maps of the West were still rudimentary. Richard
Smith views the Qing’s denigration and denial of Western maps as reverse
orientalism.3 Chinese maps, for example, lacked knowledge of much of
South Asia and did not recognize a connection between India and Britain.
Political and cultural barriers prevented the development of cartographic
knowledge. Ideal cartography, with China at the center, dominated
material representation. Maps were textually oriented and lacked
3
Smith 2013, 1–18.
136
The East Asian Sino-centric Order
common standards of representation. Chinese maps only became more
referential by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This lack of representational maps thus reinforced the idea that imperial China was intellectually backward.
The lack of modern scientific practices and critical examination also
showed in other areas. Chinese scholars and innovators focused on constant reexamination of the classics, rather than critical philosophical
inquiry. Arguments from authority prevailed rather than the competition
of rival ideas. In Justin Lin’s view, “China did not make the shift from the
experience-based process of invention to the experiment cum science
based innovation, while Europe did so through the scientific revolution
in the seventeenth century.”4 Carlo Cipolla similarly suggests that the
Chinese psychologically could not engage in military modernization and
adapt Western technology. “Cultural pride stood tenaciously in the way
of change.”5
Institutional stagnation provides another prominent explanation for
Chinese decline. In Europe, the competitive dynamics of dispersed military and political power led to innovation and the subsequent dissemination of new ideas and practices. Competition created incentives for both
economic and political elites to search for ever greater efficiency and
mobilization of resources. Rulers were eager to develop resources to
survive in a Darwinian environment of constant warfare. Between 1500
and 1700 the major European states were constantly locked in military
conflict.6 The size of armies grew exponentially as did advances in military technology – all of which required economic development and state
making.
The multiplicity of political centers also limited rulers’ extractive tendencies. Although kings and lords needed revenue, they were constrained
in the demands they could place on society. Wanton despotism would
lead to capital flight and personal migration. The “exit option” remained
a possibility.7 At the same time, the possibility of migration and movement across political boundaries created incentives for entrepreneurs to
seek hospitable environments.
This was not the case in China, so the narrative continues. As a
relatively self-contained political and economic entity, the demand for
innovation was absent. Given the hierarchical nature of the empire,
competition and warfare were relatively contained. Moreover, hierarchy
provided few means for entrepreneurs to seek more conducive
4
6
7
Lin 1995, 276. 5 Cipolla 1965, 120.
See Parker 1979; 1988, 1. For a discussion of the emergence of the European state, also
see Spruyt 1994.
Unger 1987.
The East Asian Interstate Society and the Westphalian System
137
environments. With exit not an option, rulers were not constrained and
could extract as many resources from the population as possible. As a
result, economic stagnation prevailed in China, whereas Europe from the
later Middle Ages caught up and eventually overtook the Orient.8
These accounts of Chinese stagnation should give us pause. For one, an
account that focuses solely on the negative effects of imperial hierarchy on
innovation and development would have to account for the Tang Empire
(618–907) and Song Dynasty (960–1279), or the rule of Qianlong
emperor (1735–96) that were arguably periods of growth and innovation.
Hierarchy did not uniformly lead to stagnation. Indeed, one might have
expected the industrial revolution to occur in East Asia, rather than in
Europe.9
Moreover, military competition was not absent in the region. While the
number of conflicts between the Chinese dynasties and Japan, Korea, and
Vietnam was relatively low, conflict in general was frequent.10 Border
conflicts between the sedentary, agricultural polities and the seminomadic
polities were numerous and ubiquitous. Similarly, the various East Asian
polities were constantly wracked with internal turmoil. Competition with
other Asian polities and the West thus induced change in the same manner
as it did with Europe. Jason Sharman convincingly argues that East Asia
did not stagnate in military innovation and technology, and indeed their
military prowess surpassed that of European states until the late eighteenth
century.11
Regarding intellectual stagnation, Chinese scholars and elites were not
altogether ignorant of intellectual developments in the West. Western
maps and texts had gradually made their way to the court and chroniclers.
At the request of the Wanli emperor, Mateo Ricci worked with Chinese
scholars in Beijing to produce a relatively accurate depiction of the known
world in 1602.12 Admittedly, China still appeared at the center of the
world, with the map divided into a western part, which covered Europe
and the western part of Asia, and a second section, which covered the
Americas. Nevertheless, it showed the world beyond China proper as
8
9
10
11
Mokyr 1990. On the importance of institutional innovation in Europe, also see North
1981; North and Weingast 1989, 803.
Why this did not occur is sometimes regarded as the Needham puzzle, in view of Joseph
Needham’s pathbreaking research on science and civilization in China. See Lin 1995.
Pomeranz argues that sustained industrial growth in Europe was due to rather fortuitous
circumstances, such as the availability of coal and the access to resources in the Americas.
As late as 1800, Europe and East Asia were roughly similar in levels of development.
Pomeranz 2000.
Yuan-kang Wang suggests that warfare was more frequent than a static reading of the
tribute system suggests. Wang 2013, 214.
Sharman 2019. 12 See Szcześniak 1954, 93.
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The East Asian Sino-centric Order
much larger than how it was depicted in nonrepresentational Chinese
maps.
More importantly, the argument that Chinese maps were indicative of
inferior knowledge fails to acknowledge that maps served a different
purpose.13 Maps, as Edward Boyle argues, were meant to signify and
legitimate the cultural and political order rather than serve as a representation of geographic features.
Perhaps most damning of all, the reading of the Chinese universal
empire as a relatively self-contained system contradicts a large body of
historical work that stresses the interactions across the Eurasian ecumene,
or known world.14 The hierarchy of the Sino-centric order is misunderstood, as I have argued in the previous chapter. The claimed insularity of
the Qing Empire is incorrect; and the intellectual stagnation of the imperial elites is overstated.15 Indeed, the arrival of European maritime powers
led to adjustments in East Asia even before the Europeans started to
expand their reach by formal empire.
The perspective of a retrograde, stagnant Asia confronting the West is
thus misplaced. Japan’s modernization and adjustment to European
practices, including engaging in its own colonial policies, belies such
views. The late Qing dynasty similarly aimed to catch up to the West,
even when desiring to hold on to Chinese traditions. The alleged lack of
adaptability to Western practices in international relations results from a
modernist, Western reading in which European expansion was the inevitable result of oriental backwardness and inflexibility.
5.3
Innovation and Adaptability under Western Pressure
But even without relative decline, could the collective beliefs that informed
the East Asian regional sphere be reconciled with Western norms and
principles regarding how the international system should be structured?
Erik Ringmar, for example, suggests they could not. He submits that the
Chinese view of a rigid hierarchy and political uniqueness led to the end of
the Qing Empire. He argues that there was an irreconcilable tension
between Westphalian anarchy, consisting of distinct autonomous polities,
and China’s hierarchical system. “The Westphalian system is an ‘anarchy,’
13
14
15
Boyle 2016. Also see Newby 2014, 361–62. Regarding various roles that mapmaking
played in European imagination, see Branch 2014.
Curtin 1984; Tracy 1990.
Andrew Phillips and Jason Sharman provide an excellent account that contradicts such
narratives. As they show in their discussion of the Indian Ocean system, multiple different
logics of organization continued to prosper for centuries after the European arrival in
those waters. Phillips and Sharman 2015.
The East Asian Interstate Society and the Westphalian System
139
16
the Sino-centric system a ‘hierarchy’.” The Qing Empire was doomed in
the face of European pressure to comply with the system’s structure that
emerged out of Westphalia.17
The imperial authorities never managed to fully switch frames and their mastery
of the Westphalian scripts was incomplete at best. The model that had placed the
Chinese sun at its symbolic center could not easily be traded in for a model in
which China was merely one billiard ball among others following an independent
path.18
This perspective is widely shared. “The long-held scholarly view on
Imperial Chinese foreign policy as essentially incompatible with any
form of parity-based diplomacy was naturally internalized into the mainstream narrative of China’s final entry into modern, Western-based international society.”19
This reading of East Asia, as constituting a singular hierarchical order,
provides a convenient antonym to anarchy. Interstate relations, and the
intellectual study thereof, only have meaning in systems with distinct
autonomous polities, so the argument goes. Hierarchical systems are
best understood as domestic politics. Consequently, Western studies of
China have typically concentrated on the Warring States Period, as an
example of anarchy.20 Conversely, such studies have viewed the Sinocentric system of the Ming and Qing periods as a singular hierarchy with
China subordinating the tributary states.21 These East Asian tributary
states proved unable to adapt to the state system promulgated by the
West. Only Japan managed to break out of the mold.
Closer examination, however, yields a different picture. By the nineteenth century the East Asian states, and not just Japan, engaged in
various reforms in order to meet the external pressure from the Western
colonial powers, and aimed to catch up to the more industrialized colonial
powers. As a result, the social matrix and shared understanding of how
the tributary system functioned was disrupted when the actors in that
system engaged the Westphalian vocabulary to question the East Asian
order. China, Korea, and Japan started to deploy the concept of sovereignty in their conduct of foreign relations.
However, each state drew different conclusions as to what the concept
of territorial sovereignty entailed and what the nature of reforms should
be. While Chosŏ n Korea aimed to maintain the system as it had been in
16
17
18
21
Ringmar 2012, 7. He argues that the Japanese system was hierarchical in principle, but in
reality the strong daimyo made it resemble an anarchical system in political terms. Hence,
Japan could adapt more readily to the Westphalian system.
Seo-Hyun Park discusses some of these conventional views. Park 2013, 284–86.
Ringmar 2012, 17. 19 Sverdrup-Thygeson 2012, 263. 20 See, e.g., Hui 2005.
Xiaoming Zhang 2011.
140
The East Asian Sino-centric Order
the past with minor adjustments, the Qing dynasty engaged in major
changes. For the Japanese, who had traditionally sought to distance
themselves from Chinese suzerainty, the Westphalian discourse regarding
sovereignty provided the means to assert formal equality with imperial
China, which Japan had started to assert centuries earlier. The Japanese
boldly adopted European practices, even using English and French in
their diplomacy, and refused to negotiate in Chinese, to demonstrate their
rightful place in the new, Western standard of civilization.22
5.3.1
The Qing Dynasty Adopts Westphalian Practices
As I argued earlier the alleged hierarchy and static nature of a Chinesedominated world order must be questioned. The very identity of who or
what constituted a “Chinese” dominated core went through constant
modification and adjustment. “China” was not simply a Han dominated
and Confucian-inspired empire, but was itself subject to “barbarian”
takeover and external challenge. Imperial identity was far from uniform.
Confucianism, popular with the Chinese literati, had to compete for
loyalty with Buddhism, Daoism, and Shamanism. Indeed, during the
four centuries of the Qing dynasty, the Confucian-educated elite had to
contend with an alien ethnic group in political control who adhered to
variant folk religious practices and shamanism.
Administrative practices reflected the need to accommodate different
groups as well as polities that had been incorporated into the empire. The
Qing, like their predecessors, differentiated interiority and exteriority on
the basis of cultural proximity and the recognition of Chinese centrality.
Administratively this entailed that the former Ming territories were largely administered by Han Chinese, the regular civil service officials. The
outer regions (wai) consisted of the newly acquired territories beyond the
Ming territory – Mongolia, Tibet, Turkestan, Xinjiang, Qinghai (Tibetan
plateau) – which were administered by the Lifan Yuan, the Court of
Colonial Affairs. Manchu largely staffed its administration.23 However,
the differentiation between inside and outside was fluid: areas were sometimes governed by the interior administration and sometimes by the
Grand Council as frontier zones.
Second, despite the fluidity of frontier zones, and claims to embody a
world order, Chinese emperors accepted the notion of territorial limits to
their claims of authority.24 Even before the Qing, the Ming dynasty
22
24
Seo-Hyun Park 2013, 291, 297, 298. 23 Rawski 1996, 833.
Michel Oksenberg thus speaks of the “discrepancies between stated norm and practice.”
The theoretical articulation of a clear hierarchy was in practice handled flexibly in actual
relations. Oksenberg 2001, 88–9.
The East Asian Interstate Society and the Westphalian System
141
already insisted on more precise border delimitation with the new Chosŏ n
dynasty in Korea. Similarly, the Qing signed agreements with Russia in
1689 and 1727 to more precisely delineate the frontiers.25 “One consequence of the exchanges initiated with Europe was that Qing and Japan
adopted the perspectives of early modern European states . . . Their
borders, increasingly, were territorially defined and fixed by treaty.”26
Third, the Qing dynasty was quite capable of accommodating the
sovereign states of Europe in terms of basic principles of diplomatic
protocol. Even earlier dynasties such as the Mongol Yuan regarded the
breaking of treaties and the murder of diplomats as horrible crimes.27 In
that sense, the European principles of pacta sunt servanda (treaties should
be honored) and the immunity of diplomats were shared.
The argument that the Qing were unwilling to accept European standards of conduct has as much to do with biased European interpretation
as with Chinese actions. The British Macartney mission to China in 1793
provides a telling example.
The traditional Western view has it that the Chinese imperial court
insisted on ritualistic displays of submission, particularly the kowtow, that
were unacceptable to the British envoys.28 The Chinese asserted their
supremacy and cultural superiority; the British were adamant about their
own diplomatic practices and protocol. Chinese universal imperial pretensions clashed directly with Westphalian principles.
The conventional narrative, however, omitted that Macartney had
been instructed to ask for trade concessions while deflecting questions
about how the opium grown in Indian Territories made its way into
China. It likewise omitted the condescension in King George III’s letter
to the Qing emperor in which the king stated that the mission aimed to
bring knowledge and products “. . . to Man, to Islands and places where it
appeared they had been wanting.”29 The Qing emperor, by contrast,
noted China had no needs, and least of all a need for “English religion.”
As William Rowe notes, the propaganda machine back in Britain chose to
narrate the encounter as one of opposition to Western rationalism and
liberal ideals. “It was a handy metaphor in service of the adventurous
projects the Westerners had in mind.”30
Pressure by the Western colonial powers inevitably required the Qing to
make concessions. The unequal treaty regime that emerged in the wake of
the Opium Wars of the mid-nineteenth century led to a series of asymmetric agreements, in which the Qing had to concede extraterritoriality and
25
28
29
Crossley 2008, 603. 26 Rawski 2015, 101; see also 15. 27 Barfield 1989, 201.
Smith 2013 suggests there was a cultural clash and lack of comprehension on the part of
the Chinese. For an alternative assessment, see Crossley 1992, 1479.
Rowe 2009, 146–7. 30 Rowe 2009, 148.
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The East Asian Sino-centric Order
grant multiple concessions to the Western powers.31 In the Treaty of
Tianjin (1858), Emperor Xianfeng even conceded that “England is an
independent sovereign state, let it have equal status [with China].”32
In 1861 the Qing also established the equivalent of a foreign office, the
Zongli (or Tsungli) Yamen, to conduct its external relations, rather than
continue to rely on the Board of Rites. By changing the institutional
location from the Board of Rites, a key institution of the tributary system,
the Qing court “highlighted the nominal endorsement of one of the most
fundamental normative features of the Society, sovereign equality, and
signified a modification of the hierarchical East Asian International
Society.”33 Initially the Zongli Yamen was intended to be a temporary
measure to deal with “the barbarian incursions.”34 However, the edict
that established the Zongli Yamen also tasked it to develop the knowledge
of foreign languages and to acquire information on the flow of trade and
revenues.35 All these tasks proved indispensable in meeting the external
threats from the West, and the ministry became permanent. It engaged in
a fundamental reorganization of how external relations were conducted
and gradually became a true foreign ministry. “The Zongli Yamen went
from being a temporary institution to one of the most important offices of
the late Qing.”36 And whereas the earlier missions to the West had been
ad-hoc and temporary, the Qing sent their first permanent legation to
London in 1876.37
The ritual aspects of imperial rule altered as well. In 1873, the kowtow,
a key ritual of the tributary performance, was officially abolished in
Chinese foreign relations.
Moreover, cognitive frames gradually started to shift. New historical
parallels were drawn. Traditionally, imperial narratives emphasized the
continuity of the empire across the centuries. The Tang, Song, Ming, and
Qing were grouped together as all legitimated by the mandate of heaven.
The universal empire straddled the ages as the core of civilization. By the
1860s, however, intelligentsia started to draw analogies with the Eastern
Zhou era (720–221 BCE), the period of fragmentation. Over the next
31
32
33
34
35
36
On the various unequal treaties establishing extraterritoriality, see Kayaoǧlu 2010, chapter 5; Yang 2011, 298.
Yongjin Zhang 2001, 60 fn. 81; Seo-Hyun Park 2013, 281 and fn. 1.
Suzuki 2009, 75.
Cranmer-Byng 1972; Yang 2011, 303–4; R. Bin Wong 1997, 155.
Westerners were given prominent roles in the Qing bureaucracy. Britishman Robert Hart
was made inspector general of maritime customs and represented on occasion the Qing
court. American William Martin became president of the foreign language school. When
the Qing sent several missions to the West in the 1860s and 1870s, their missions were
often headed by Westerners. Lawrence Wong 2017, 171, 175, 184–85.
Rudolph 2005, 202. 37 Lawrence Wong 2017, 199.
The East Asian Interstate Society and the Westphalian System
143
decades more than a dozen scholars suggested that the nineteenth-century state system was analogous to the Spring and Autumn periods (772–
481 BCE) and the period of the Warring States (403–221 BCE).38 The
conceptualization of a state system of fully autonomous entities thus took
root, as did the idea that China was but one state among many.
Social Darwinist views influenced the perception that China could only
survive by evolution and adjustment. Confucianism and the notion of
Tianxia, the universal cosmic order, were reinterpreted as evolutionary
philosophies that would ultimately lead to universal order.39 The scholar
Kang Youwei championed the idea that the traditional reading of
Confucius was incorrect and based on the wrong texts. Instead,
Confucius should be read as a great innovator who foresaw the progress
of history to the eventual Age of Universal Peace. Emperor Guangxu
(1871–1908) became a powerful supporter of Kang, and the Hundred
Days reform, until he was effectively ousted by the Empress Dowager.40
Western international law entered Qing practices as well. Thirty years
after the American jurist Henry Weaton published Elements of
International Law, a Chinese translation by William Martin became a
foundational text in China. This translation, the Wanguo Gongfa, was
also transmitted to other Asian polities.41 Interestingly, Martin gave the
translation a universalist interpretation suggesting compatibility between
natural law and Tianxia thus obfuscating Wheaton’s clearly Western
civilizational focus with its emphasis on the Christian nations.42
Well aware that the West used international law to its own advantage,
Chinese scholars realized that they could adopt Western international law
to enhance their own national security and to perhaps use it against the
West itself.43 By the late nineteenth century, “Intellectuals and political
figures debated sovereignty more or less directly and attempted to create
commensurability between Chinese and Western ideas of authority.”44
Sun Yat-sen, the later president of the Republic, stressed the importance
of adopting the Western discourse of civilization in order to gain international recognition.45
Kirk Larsen thus argues that by the nineteenth century the Qing had
come to accept key features of Western international law and diplomacy.
The Qing encouraged and facilitated Chosŏ n Korea to sign treaties and
38
40
41
42
43
45
Hao and Wang 1980, 189. 39 Carrai 2019, 94–95, 101–2.
Schoppa 2011, 107–8, 116.
Suzuki 2009, 69–72, 83. The reception to Western international law was mixed, with
some high-ranking officials arguing that the Chinese system was superior.
See the discussion by Carrai 2017a, 146–48. See also Liu 2004, 135–39.
Yang 2011, 300–301; Carrai 2019, 88. 44 Carrai 2017a, 151.
Carrai 2019, 91. Arguably, the adaptation of Western international law later lent itself to
justifying the incorporation of areas such as Tibet and Xinjiang. Carrai 2017.
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The East Asian Sino-centric Order
observe Western protocol. Indeed, contrary to Ringmar, who argues that
Japan adjusted to Westphalian norms but that China could not, Larsen
cites conversations in which the Qing statesmen advocated for the principles of international law in contrast to the realpolitik of their Japanese
counterparts. Larsen concludes:
Both the Qing empire and major Western nations were in agreement on the merits
of Western-style international order and the inevitability if not desirability of a
shift from a Sino-centric “tribute system” to a Westphalian “family of nations.”46
As Turan Kayaoǧlu argues, China’s acceptance of international law and
its institutional changes indicate that it had adjusted to Western international practices by 1880.47
Similarly, Seo-Hyun Park suggests that “the Sino-centric hierarchical
order was not the equivalent of an anti-Westphalian state system – it had
always allowed autonomy and equality.”48 Even though the relations
between China and its tributary states were asymmetric, the relations
were also interdependent in that the relationship granted significant
autonomy and noninterference to the tributary states. Moreover, performing the tributary ritual also involved joint enactment and mutual
recognition.
The Qing Empire was thus willing to adapt in order to meet external
pressures, but these changes were not uncontested.49 Some domestic
groups challenged the changes from previous historical practices.50 In
particular, the entrenched bureaucracy resisted court policies that
favored reform. To offset the dominance of the Confucian literati and
bureaucracy, emperors thus resorted to a favored “inner bureaucracy” to
counter the larger general bureaucracy. But even this inner bureaucracy
would at times challenge imperial oversight, with the court principals
46
47
49
50
Larsen 2013, 245. Mary Wright similarly critiques the perception that Chinese foreign
policy was uninformed and unadaptable. Instead, she argues that the Qing were trying to
adapt while recognizing the domestic and international constraints within which they had
to operate. Chosŏ n Korea, however, proved far more rigid. Wright 1958.
Kayaoǧlu 2010, 158. 48 Seo-Hyun Park 2013, 288.
It is well beyond the aims of this book to discuss the complex causes of the multiple
violent struggles within nineteenth-century China. My focus is on the relations between
the polities of the East Asian order and their relations with the encroaching Western
powers. However, the relative pacific nature of relations between East Asian polities
should not obscure the internal violence that befell some of these states. For example, the
Taiping Rebellion (1850–64) alone led to more than 20 million deaths.
Hamashita notes a variety of forces that put the traditional tributary system under
pressure. The changes in the overall economic environment offered less incentives to
conduct tributary trade. Moreover, in each of the East Asian polities, reformists and
conservatives had different views regarding the old system. Within Qing China, central
control also started to encounter more resistance from ethnic and peripheral areas.
Hamashita 2001.
The East Asian Interstate Society and the Westphalian System
145
51
unable to control their agents. The Board of Rites, for example, challenged the Zongli Yamen’s authority to conduct relations with Korea.52
Conversely, other domestic interests favored adaptation to Western
practices. The Self-Strengthening Movement argued that modernization and industrial development were key to resist the West.53 The
movement started shortly after the two Opium Wars and focused particularly on the modernization of military technology and indigenous
industrial production. As part of the Self-Strengthening Movement
thousands of students were sent abroad, with more than 25,000 going
to Japan alone between 1898 and 1912.54 The Self-Strengthening
Movement, Ziqiang yundong, also known as the Foreign Affairs
Movement, Yangwu yundong, was headed by Prince Gong (1833–
98), indicative of the importance attached to change.55 Gong was also
in charge of the Zongli Yamen, and head of the Grand Council, and
became one of the most important Qing representatives with the great
powers.
Similarly, merchants with foreign interests were not averse to adopting
Western practices in order to alter the existing restrictions on trade.56 In
1759, Emperor Qianlong limited Westerners to the port of Canton
(Guangzhou) in an attempt to limit foreign encroachment. This limitation was known as “the Canton System,” and consisted of Thirteen
Factories. Under the guarantee system, “foreign traders were only
allowed to do business with these designated Hong-merchants who guaranteed and supervised foreign traders.”57 By the nineteenth century,
however, some of the Hong merchants started to use Western international law because it seemed to give them more protection than they
enjoyed in the Qing legal system. Thus, one such prominent merchant,
Houqua, successfully brought suit in an American court to settle a dispute
with American debtors. “Houqua’s representation by American attorneys
in the US court not only recovered assets to which he was entitled but also
served to leverage a foreign legal infrastructure to mediate a dispute
among his American debtors over their individual responsibilities.”58
51
52
53
56
58
On the logic of principal-agent issues, see Miller 1992.
Wright 1958, 379. Yuhua Wang suggests that local elites remained powerful ever since
the failure of the Wang Anshi reforms initiated by the Song. While the position of
emperors became more secure in exchange for local autonomy, this had long-term
consequences for the ability of later dynasties to mobilize resources when faced by
external pressures. Wang 2019.
Yang 2011, 306. 54 Carrai 2019, 92. 55 Lawrence Wong 2017, 166.
See also Hamashita 2001, 59. 57 Yang 2011, 297.
John Wong 2013, 4. In Korea, too, there were advocates for reform, such as the
Enlightenment (Independence) Party, but they failed in their bid for power against the
ruling government. Seo-Hyun Park 2013, 295, 296.
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The East Asian Sino-centric Order
Other challenges arguably came from developments within the empire
itself. As with other multinational empires that sought to include many
ethnicities, the dominant ethnic core of the empire tended to downplay its
own identity. Similar to Austrians in the Austrian–Hungarian Empire, or
Russians in the USSR, Han Chinese identity remained muted and only
emerged in the course of the nineteenth century. The search for a national
identity required identification and homogenization that had previously
been absent. Distinct ethnic and religious groups were recognized as
Manchu, Mongol, Han, or Tibetan, but these were managed either by
inclusion or by the multivocal representation of the emperor. However,
ironically, the same imperial patronage for distinct cultures in the early
part of Qing rule became also the source for nationalist mobilization in the
nineteenth century.59 Some of the nationalist sentiment led to the reform
movement taking on anti-Manchu overtones.60
The quest to become a Western-style nation-state thus stood in direct
tension with the multivocal, multiethnic policies of the previous dynasties
and the early Qing emperors. The more China tried to look like a Western
state, and emphasize a particular national identity, the more it raised the
possibility of internal conflicts between different ethnicities, as for example occurred in the Miao (Hmong) rebellion (1854–73) and the Panthay
(Hui) rebellion (1856–73).61
In sum, the alleged cultural barrier to all things Western is a misperception. Indeed, the state’s capacity to raise revenue increased dramatically in
the course of the nineteenth century.62 Governmental and military reforms
were enacted in the process. What proved critical in the end were pressures
induced by the West and the challenges by the new Western-style military
units. Moreover, territorial claims by the Western powers forced the government to reallocate is resources to coastal areas in such a manner that it
alienated its public support. The indemnities that had to be paid to foreign
states after the Sino-Japanese war (1894–95) and the Boxer Rebellion
(1899–1901) greatly exacerbated the problem. The Japanese imposed an
indemnity of about 200 million taels, twice the annual Qing revenue.
Following the Boxer rebellion the foreign powers demanded even more –
450 million taels – to be paid with interest over thirty-nine years, bringing
the total to about 1 billion taels.63 In short, external pressures compounded
59
61
62
63
Crossley 2008, 619–20; Rawski 1996, 836, 839. 60 Schoppa 2011, 116.
For a discussion of whether it is appropriate to use “ethnicity” to understand such
conflicts, see Atwill 2003. On the Muslim revolts, see Liu and Smith 1980, 211–43.
These revolts occurred against the backdrop of even larger revolts, such as the Taiping
Rebellion, which had multiple sources.
For an overview of some of these factors, see R. Bin Wong 1997, 155–57.
Schoppa 2011, 110–23.
The East Asian Interstate Society and the Westphalian System
147
with internal problems, not simply cultural blinders, or an inherent resistance to the state system, ended the Qing dynasty.
5.3.2
Chosŏ n Korea Clings to the Central Civilization
The smaller states had always had to negotiate their degree of subservience to the Chinese Empire in the Sino-centric order advocated by the
Ming and Qing.64 For Korea, this meant harmonizing the new principle
of sovereignty with continued recognition of China’s supremacy. Sadae,
service to the great, meant that Korea would continue to recognize China
as its suzerain and protector, and yet enter into agreements with Japan
and Western powers if pressed. Paradoxically, for Western observers,
Korea thus claimed to be an “autonomous-yet-dependent” vassal.65
Invoking China as protector provided a means to maintain the old
Korean order against Western and Japanese encroachment.
The Qing thus had to navigate between the old Sino-centric order and
the Western powers’ intentions to expand their spheres of influence. The
Qing had been confronted by English, French, and Russian territorial
infringements and asymmetric treaties. Yet at the same time, the Qing
rulers were also aware that closely aligned tributary states, such as Korea,
relied on Chinese suzerainty for protection from outside interference.
Chosŏ n Korea even went so far as to isolate itself both diplomatically
and culturally, implementing tight border controls. Tellingly, “Of the
nineteen foreign priests known to have been active between 1836 and
1866, twelve were executed, four died natural deaths, and three succeeded in escaping from the country.”66
Moreover, the Korean rulers argued that while Korea might sign agreements, it did not engage in diplomacy since this was beholden to its
suzerain. With this stance, the Chosŏ n rulers implicated China as their
superior and ultimately as the actor responsible for the policies of the
Western powers and Japan with regard to Korea. Consequently, in the
face of armed conflicts with an American merchant ship (the General
Sherman incident), as well as in clashes with Prussian and French forces,
the Chosŏ n rulers continued to refract external pressures by referring to
Qing suzerainty.67
For its part, the Qing dynasty did not wish to become embroiled in
conflicts with the colonial powers in order to defend Korea. It was
64
65
I leave Vietnam out of my discussion, even though it had been a tributary state to China,
because France colonized Vietnam by the nineteenth century. It was less closely connected to the Qing cultural order and thus did not raise the same level of concerns as the
status of Korea.
Seo-Hyun Park 2013, 292, 296. 66 Wright 1958, 375. 67 Wright 1958, 370–73.
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The East Asian Sino-centric Order
fully occupied with its own internal and external challenges. The Qing
thus pressured the Chosŏ n rulers to adapt to Western diplomatic
practices and discourse. Despite these pressures not much changed.
While Koreans concluded treaties with Great Britain, Germany,
Russia, Italy, France, and Austro-Hungary, they attached the “autonomous but dependent” clause to each treaty.68 As I discuss below,
ultimately Japan would use Chosŏ n Korea’s insistence on Chinese
suzerainty as a pretext, deploying troops to Korea in the wake of a
coup d’état. When Korea asked for Chinese assistance, conflict
erupted. This was briefly resolved but ultimately led to Japan’s colonization of the peninsula.
The interactions of the Qing and Chosŏ n dynasties thus provided the
toughest test for the shift from the Sino-centric order to the Westphalian
system. The Chosŏ n had cultural and strategic reasons to champion the
old order. For the Qing this created a predicament because Korea now
called on the Qing to deliver on the obligation that it, as the suzerain, had
to protect the Chosŏ n dynasty. Surrendering that obligation thus meant
giving up on the tributary logic. Nevertheless, the Qing proved willing to
give up on the traditional relation between China and its most loyal
tributary state, and to pressure Chosŏ n Korea toward the international
order championed by the West and, increasingly, also by Japan. In this
sense, the willingness of the Qing to stop using the discourse of the
tributary order challenges the premise that the Qing were conceptually
unable to adjust to the Westphalian system.
5.3.3
Japan Socializes into European International Society
The arrival of Commodore Perry’s fleet in 1853 and the coerced treaty
with the United States reinforced the Tokugawa shogunate’s awareness
of European and American colonial ambitions. Groups within Japan,
however, held diverse views on how to counter this threat. As in Qing
China, conservative groups continued to see international relations
within a tributary framework, albeit one with Japan at the center rather
than China. Among these groups the samurai in particular feared a loss
of status.69 Opponents even assassinated Ii Naosuke, the tairo (the
senior official who advised the shogun), after Japan was forced to sign
unequal treaties with the United States.70 Reformers, by contrast, advocated that to counter Western encroachment, Japan should become like
68
69
70
Seo-Hyun Park 2013, 301, fn. 19.
Reinhard Bendix notes how the abolition of daimyo domains involved half a million
samurai. Bendix 1978, 478.
Suzuki 2009, 81.
The East Asian Interstate Society and the Westphalian System
149
the West. Akira Iriye demonstrates how the Meiji government actively
sought to overcome domestic opposition by aligning foreign and domestic policy. Expansionism proved to be one means of deflecting opposition to reforms.71
After decades of internal turmoil, the Tokugawa shogunate was
replaced with a newly politicized imperial role. The Meiji Restoration of
1868 sought to modernize Japan from above and bring Japan into the
circle of “civilized” states, a status determined by, and reserved for, the
European and American states.
The Japanese reformers were well aware of the Janus face of Western
civilization. On the one hand, the Westphalian system professed to be
based upon mutually recognized territorial borders, recognition of sovereign authority within those borders, and juridical equality. On the other
hand, by invoking the standard of civilization, the Western states denied
many areas of the world legal equality and indeed their independence.
Western international law provided the context to justify the subjugation
of those polities that were deemed to be uncivilized. The Japanese realized
that international law offered protection from colonial powers, but only if
the state in question was deemed a legal and equal subject under that
law.72
Since the East Asian states were denied such civilized status they became
targets for colonialism and subject to unequal treaties. Consequently, Meiji
Japan aimed to counter the European threat by acquiring civilized status,
which meant that it had to adopt European and American practices. It had
to switch its collective imagination of international relations from a tributary cognitive frame, with its own notion of a Japanese central civilization,
to that of the Westphalian system that had a very different classification of
civilized and uncivilized.
To acquire the status of civilized nation, Japan had to distance itself
from its Asian neighbors. As Iver Neumann and Jennifer Welsh convincingly argue, the creation of a specific “Self” requires distinction of a
given “Other.” Consequently, the development of European identity
involved the classification of the Other, the non-European, as barbarian
or savage. This evolution of European identity in turn played a role in the
maintenance of a commonly shared collective imagination among
European states.73 Similarly, to acquire the status and self-image of a
71
72
73
See Iriye 1989.
In addition to the Wanguo gongfa (the translation of Weaton’s work on international law),
another text became foundational (the Bankoku koho), based on the lectures of Simon
Vissering, a Dutch professor of international law. Suzuki 2009, 84.
Neumann and Welsh 1991, 329.
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The East Asian Sino-centric Order
civilized state, Japan engaged in a deliberate effort to distance itself from
the semibarbarian, uncivilized East Asian states.
As part of this process of demarcation the Meiji government embarked
on a conscious policy of imperial mapping. Cartography served as a
means of claiming and appropriating territories that had only been loosely
connected to the Japanese state, such as Hokkaido. In addition, imperial
maps could designate civilized core and less civilized entities, making the
latter targets for appropriation. Maps also suggested a unitary and coordinating state whereas in the past different authorities had actually interacted in a heterogeneous fashion, creating what Edward Boyle terms the
“state effect.”74
Acquiring civilized status also entailed clear border demarcation. This
would provide a modicum of assurance that the Western colonial powers
could not easily encroach on Japan or its sovereign territories. In this
regard the treaty with Russia, the Saint Petersburg Treaty (1875), in
which Japan was treated as an equal and which settled their territorial
dispute over Sakhalin and the Kurils, was particularly significant.75
At the same time, if other East Asian states remained classified as
uncivilized and not protected under the Law of Nations, those states
could then become legitimate targets of Japan itself. Meiji Japan thus
not only engaged in a dramatic process of modernization and legitimation
along Western lines but simultaneously engaged in a process of mimetic
imperialism. Japan’s desire to join European international society thus
had long-term consequences for its relations in East Asia. “As Japan
increasingly associated itself with the Society, it began to emulate the
Society’s ‘civilized’ members by engaging in imperialist policies designed
to demonstrate that it had attained a level of European ‘civilization’ high
enough for it to qualify to play a part in its forcible dissemination in
Asia.”76
Inevitably, this led to confrontations with other East Asian polities in
the tributary system and particularly China. The status of Formosa
(Taiwan), the Ryukyu islands, and ultimately Korea became key contentious issues. Japanese foreign minister Soejima was dispatched to the
Qing court in 1873 to deal with those issues, as well as to demonstrate
the newfound authority of the Meiji emperor. The manner in which Japan
engaged China was altogether new. The Japanese delegation not only
intended to discuss the various territorial problems but also displayed a
74
75
76
Boyle 2016, 77. Imperial assertion also meant the naming of territory. Hence, the
territory of Yezo acquired its present name: Hokkaido.
Iriye 1989, 740.
Suzuki 2009, 2. Iriye also sees Japanese imperialism as parallel with Western imperialism
and modernization. Iriye 1989, 749.
The East Asian Interstate Society and the Westphalian System
151
new Japan in multiple forms and to multiple audiences – to the Chinese
court as well as to the representatives from the West.
One issue on the agenda involved China’s relations with Taiwan. When
several dozen crewmen from the Ryukyu Islands were killed on Taiwan
after their ship was stranded, Japan, as the suzerain of the Ryukyu kingdom, planned a punitive expedition to Taiwan.77 But, since the status of
Taiwan was unclear, the Japanese delegation wanted to get clarification
from the Qing court, hence, the mission to Beijing. Before their departure, Soejima also discussed the Taiwan issue with the American Minister
to Japan, Charles DeLong, and with General LeGendre, the American
consul to Amoy, China. LeGendre in particular argued that Japan might
annex Taiwan without great difficulty.78
The mission to the Qing court revealed a clash of conceptual frameworks. The Japanese chose to emphasize their difference from the Qing
officials. They arrived in American-made gunboats (mimicking the arrival
of Perry in Japan decades earlier). Their dress was Western and they
turned down the lodgings offered by the Chinese. They refused to kowtow and insisted that Western diplomatic etiquette be followed.79 Most
importantly they engaged in Western legal discourse. “It would be this
feature of the embassy, the application of international law as derived
from the Western world, which, more than anything else, would set the
Soejima mission apart from Japan’s past intercourse with China.”80
The mission questioned whether the Qing government exercised full
control over Taiwan. If not, then Japan could claim under international
law that the lack of effective control legitimated external intervention.81
The Qing Vice-Roy Li Hongzhang admitted that the Qing were not able
to exercise full control over the Taiwanese aboriginals, and the Japanese
presented this as a justification for their military punitive expeditions a
year later.
After the Japanese engaged in several military expeditions, the Qing
realized that they had to bring Taiwan more formally under their control
and they made Taiwan a province of the Chinese Empire rather than a
tributary. Ultimately this did not appease Japan’s ambitions and the
Japanese government would later use the pretext of “bringing civilization
to the ‘savages’ of Taiwan . . . as a way of justifying the colonization of
Taiwan.”82
The Soejima mission achieved another important success in being
received by the emperor. The Western powers gained the right of imperial
77
78
80
Iriye 1989, 741. The Ryukyu kingdom had for centuries acknowledged Japanese suzerainty. Toby 1991, 45–52.
McWilliams 1975, 242. 79 McWilliams 1975, 248, 250.
McWilliams 1975, 243. 81 Eskildsen 2002, 395. 82 Eskildsen 2002, 389, 396.
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The East Asian Sino-centric Order
audience for their representatives in treaties in 1860, but this had been
held in abeyance.83 Soejima emphasized his status as ambassador of an
independent state and reiterated the demands of modern international
legal protocol. The emperor then conceded and Soejima became the first
representative from a nontributary state to be received by the emperor
since the British Macartney mission of 1793. The delegates from other
countries were only after that incident received as well, which did not go
unnoticed by the Western observers.84 Japanese representatives had
started to become like them and had scored a diplomatic coup.
The status of the Ryukyu kingdom, the chain of islands stretching from
Japan to Taiwan, also became a source of contention. The Ryukyu kingdom had traditionally paid tribute to both the Qing emperor and the
Japanese shoguns, while the latter claimed suzerainty and granted investiture to the Ryukyu rulers. Consequently, the status of the islands under
international law was ambiguous. The Qing saw no problem with the
divided suzerainty over the islands, but Japan realized that this made
Ryukyu vulnerable to external powers. Just as the ambiguous status of
Taiwan made it vulnerable to Japanese ambitions, so, too, could the
ambiguous status of the Ryukyu kingdom serve as a pretext for other
colonizers. Hence, Japan gradually expanded its authority over the
islands. In 1872, Japan announced to foreign representatives in Tokyo
that Ryukyu was Japanese domain, and put the Ryukyu king on retainer
with a post in Japan. Ryukyu ceased to pay tribute to China in 1874 and
Japan formally annexed Ryukyu five years later claiming it as part of Japan
proper.
Sino-Japanese tensions culminated in their conflict over Korea. Shortly
after the Meiji replaced the shogunate, the Meiji court sent a delegation to
Korea, suggesting that the Chosŏ n kingdom enter into diplomatic relations with Japan and recognize the Japanese emperor. The Koreans
refused and acknowledged their subordinate status to the Qing emperor,
a status by which foreign treaties were to be handled by the Qing court.85
When Soejima queried the Zongli Yamen regarding the status of Korea,
he was given the same reply the Americans had received when they had
sought clarification of the Sino-Korean relation. “Although the Korean
King receives investiture from the Emperor of China, the internal administration and the questions of war and peace remain in the hands of the
Korean government, and China exercizes [sic] no control over them.”86
83
84
86
The British had sent the Amherst mission in 1817 after the failure of the Macartney
mission, but Amherst was not received by the emperor.
McWilliams 1975, 252, 269–71. 85 McWilliams 1975, 240.
McWilliams 1975, 265. See also Suzuki 2009, 167. Hamashita suggests that Chinese and
American representatives had different conceptions of sovereignty but that these
The East Asian Interstate Society and the Westphalian System
153
This formal acknowledgment of Korea’s vassal status was gradually
exploited by Japan. If the Chosŏ n dynasty was a vassal of China as it
claimed, then Korea could not be an independent state and enter into
treaties. Conversely, if it was an independent state, then Japan and other
states could legitimately engage the Korean rulers and sign international
agreements. Hence, external authorities who aimed to open up Korea and
engage in trade and diplomatic negotiations asked whether Korea could
sign agreements as a sovereign state or whether, as a tributary state, the
Qing would make decisions for Korea. Moreover, the ambiguous status of
Korea under international law made it vulnerable to colonial expansion.
As the small central civilization, Korea turned to China for protection.
If the Qing obliged they might be drawn into a conflict between Korea and
one of the colonial powers, increasingly expected to be Japan. On the
other hand, if the Qing recognized Korea as a fully sovereign state, they
would erode the logic of their own tributary system. Consequently, the
Qing suggested to the Koreans that they adopt some of the trappings of
Western international relations, and that they sign their own treaties with
the American and other powers.87 Thus, should Japan encroach on
Korean independence, then, under international law, the Western powers
might offer Korea some protection. The Qing thus wished to push Korea
toward adapting to Western practices, in order to vouchsafe Korean
independence by having the barbarians fight each other – an old imperial
practice.
As a result Korea made some adjustments and signed treaties with
several colonial powers and Japan. The Treaty of Kanghwa of 1876
echoed the legal view pushed by Japan. Article 1 stated that “Korea is
an independent state and has equal rights with Japan . . . both sides shall
treat each other as equals.”88 In treating Korea as a sovereign state, the
Japanese started to pry Korea away from Chinese suzerainty. “The
Korean treaty stipulated that the kingdom was ‘an independent nation’,
thereby putting an end to its tributary relationship with the Chinese
Empire.”89
Subsequently, Japan continued to challenge the traditional ties
between China and Korea. Facing internal turmoil and a coup d’état,
the Korean government asked for Chinese support. The reformists in
87
88
differences could be accommodated. While the American inspector general of customs in
Beijing wondered whether Korea constituted a colony of China, the senior Chinese
diplomat Li Hongzhang replied that Korea was a foreign nation. However, in practice,
neither one challenged the rival perceptions but rather viewed them within the framework
of a third category, the regional principle (chiiki genre), to cover peripheral trade that did
not fit squarely in either framework. Hamashita 2001, 79.
Suzuki 2009, 169. Korea thus signed treaties with Germany and Britain in 1883.
Suzuki 2009, 165. 89 Iriye 1989, 746.
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The East Asian Sino-centric Order
turn were aided by Japan. When the reformist coup failed, the Japanese
delegation in Seoul was attacked. Military hostilities between Japan and
China ensued. Although China and Japan reached an agreement in the
Convention of Tianjin, full blown conflict ultimately erupted into the
Sino-Japanese war of 1894–95. Following the Sino-Japanese war and
the Treaty of Shimonoseki of 1895, Korea had to repudiate its traditional
ties with China.90
Interestingly, Japan used its conduct in the war to further enhance its
position as a civilized state. It argued that it had conducted the war
according to the dictates of international law, and thus had performed as
a civilized nation. Prominent British international lawyers concurred, thus
implicitly validating the legality of previous agreements between Japan and
Britain as between two states operating with the Law of Nations.
Together, Takahashi, Westlake, and Holland provided the argument that justified
Japan’s conduct of the war, and persuaded both the diplomatic community who
represented the family of nations, and the international legal community who
safeguarded the moral standing of the family of nations, that Japan had acted in a
civilized and legal manner in her conduct of the war. This was, to repeat, an
international judgment that ratified Japan’s standing as a sovereign state.91
China thus had to recognize Korea as an independent state rather than as
a vassal. Japan subsequently annexed Korea as part of the Japanese
Empire in 1910.
By modeling itself after the Western powers, Japan simultaneously
adopted the colonial imperialism of the West. “Mimetic imperialism
was implicated in the complex process of redefining political power and
national identity as Japan engaged Western civilization in the 1870s.”92 In
so doing, Japan dealt the final blow to the tributary system.
The Meiji Restoration, modernization from above with emulation of
Western models of statehood, changed the collective consciousness in
which international relations were conducted in a tributary manner.93 As
90
91
92
93
Suzuki 2009, 170–76. For the developments leading up to the war, see Iriye 1989, 751–
65. Carrai argues that the tributary system continued even after the Opium Wars and only
came to an end with Shimonoseki. Carrai 2017a, 150. Even then, Vietnam apparently
sent the last tribute mission to the Qing in 1908. Carrai 2019, 82.
Howland 2009, 188. Westlake, professor of law at Cambridge, and Holland, professor at
Oxford, were decorated by the Japanese emperor in 1902 for their assistance. The irony
did not escape some Japanese observers. Okakura Tenshin, a dean of the Tokyo arts
school, thus remarked that Westerners used to think of Japan as uncivilized, but “since
Japan started massacring thousands of people on the battlefield of Manchuria, the
Westerners have called it a civilized country.” Quoted in Suzuki 2009, 175.
Eskildsen 2002, 403.
Both Iriye 1989 and Suzuki 2009 emphasize the importance of Japan’s role in dismantling the system.
The East Asian Interstate Society and the Westphalian System
155
Ronald Toby shows, the cognitive transition was profound. For centuries,
Japan applied its own version of a tributary system to order relations with
its neighbors. Western imperial powers presented Japan with a picture of
the world that was “greatly at variance with, in fact mutually incompatible
with, the received wisdom.”94
This leads to two conclusions. First, the transition from a tributary
framework was not necessarily easier for Japan than China, as sometimes
argued. Second, Japan’s ability to make the radical transition contradicts
the notion that the cognitive frame of tributary relations ipso facto made
adaptation to the Westphalian system impossible.
5.4
The Narrative of Incompatibility: The Demand
for Normalization
Kirk Larsen provides a persuasive explanation for the narrative that China
was incapable of adjusting to Western practices. His account places the
emphasis less on the Chinese position than on that of the West. He
suggests that the Qing Empire underwent a major transformation in
reaction to encroachment by European and American colonial policies.
Indeed, China started to engage in the very actions that it resisted previously, most notably, direct intervention in Korean affairs, which
included the dispatch of armed troops, as in the prelude to the SinoJapanese war. In short, the Qing started to engage in modern, Westernstyle imperialism. This created concern that the Qing Empire would
exclude the Western colonial powers from areas that the Chinese coveted.
The Western colonial powers thus continued to emphasize the concept
of a Sino-centric tributary system rather than acknowledge changes
within the nineteenth-century Qing dynasty. The Western powers could
thereby deride China’s tribute system as incompatible with the state
system, and justify their own imperial ambitions toward China.95 By
furthering the narrative of imperial China as a polity with an inflexible
tributary system, Western powers created grounds to exclude China from
the list of civilized nations, thereby forcing it to accept unequal treaties.
Moreover, one cannot help but be struck by the ultimate irony in the
Western narrative that juxtaposed Westphalian principles of sovereignty
with Chinese insistence on universal supremacy. That narrative decried
the East Asian order for denying polities, such as Korea, their independence. Western politicians and scholars thus argued that, since imperial
China denied sovereignty to its tributaries, China itself might be
94
Toby 1991, 232.
95
Larsen 2013, 246, 248–49.
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The East Asian Sino-centric Order
legitimately brought under Western control through unequal treaties and
the concession system.
However, at the same time that the Qing Empire was deemed incompatible with the principles of territorial sovereignty, the European powers
and the United States were simultaneously denying those very principles
to other states in order to expand their own empires. Where they could
establish formal or informal control they did so. Where outright control
was not immediately feasible, they insisted on extraterritorial recognition,
as they did in China.96
And what to make of Chinese claims to cultural superiority and the
denigration of other peoples as barbarian? What to make of the offense
given to the Macartney mission? Here again myopia and self-conceit
played their roles in both theaters of state. The indignation of Western
observers to Chinese insult failed to illuminate the biases in the West’s
own civilizing mission. What were the “white man’s burden” and the
“mission civilisatrice” if not assertions of superiority that gave the West
the right to dominate others? In the European mind-set, the Ottoman
Empire was only deemed worthy of admission to the European system by
the mid-nineteenth century. Asian and African polities would have to wait
even longer. Well into the twentieth century the European imperial
powers still argued that their colonies were not fit for independence. If
the Qing saw themselves as a superior civilization, imperial China was
perhaps more like the European colonial empires than the latter cared to
admit.97
Finally, one must distinguish between the logic of the tributary system
and the practices of the East Asian polities in the nineteenth century. The
logic of the tributary system was indeed different from that of the
Westphalian order. The tributary system’s principle of ordering polities
by rank contradicted the legal equality of states in the Westphalian order.
Moreover, the idea that an external power, the cultural hegemon, needed
to legitimate another state’s ruler contradicted the Western notion of
sovereignty.
However, in practice, the flexibility of the tributary system allowed even
the Qing court to make significant adjustments. That China’s adjustments were less dramatic than Japan’s had a lot to do with domestic
interest groups who opposed reforms, and blocked the modernization
efforts of emperor Guangxu, rather than China’s inability to reimagine its
place in the Westphalian system.
96
97
See Kayaŏ glu 2010.
As Suzuki points out, the Western civilizational criterion established a clear hierarchy,
not all that distinct from Chinese notions of civilized and barbarian. Suzuki 2009, 55.
The East Asian Interstate Society and the Westphalian System
5.5
Conclusion
5.5.1
Rethinking the Tributary System
157
The conventional accounts of politics in the East Asian tributary system
need rethinking. Viewing the East Asian system as a hierarchical, static,
Sino-centric order misconstrues both the nature of interstate relations in
the region, as well as the interaction of East Asian states with polities
beyond. World system accounts misunderstood the density of interactions across Eurasia, instead ascribing autarkic and isolationist tendencies
to the universalist ideology of the Chinese dynasties. The early English
School, in viewing the East Asian region as a formal hierarchy with the
Chinese Empire at is center, failed to recognize the dual agency of both
the central power and the tributary state. The relationship was certainly
asymmetric, but tributary relations legitimized both the central imperial
power and the tributary state, conveying rights and duties to both rather
than constituting a simple unilinear hierarchy. The Chinese imperial
dynasties received tribute but in exchange also had to grant favorable
terms of trade and allow the tributary state relative autonomy rather than
try to exercise formal control.
As a consequence, there have also been tendencies to view the late
imperial dynasty, the Qing dynasty, as passive and retrograde, incapable
of adjusting to the Westphalian system.98 Contrary to such narratives, the
Qing did engage the West and, by force and by choice, started to adapt.
Thus, as Takeshi Hamashita suggests, conceptually, the notion of tributary and treaty relations derived from vastly different understandings of
international relations. But pragmatically they could be reconciled. “Not
only were tribute and treaty relationships not mutually contradictory, but
the tribute concept internalised the treaties.”99
The alleged incompatibility of the East Asian states with Westphalia
was partially inspired by Western narratives that justified European and
American imperial expansion. Eliminating that bias can also shed light on
how we might understand China’s actions today. As Bjørnar Thygeson
suggests,
Regarding instead the Chinese diplomatic tradition as also informed by a politically flexible doctrine of “hegemony if possible, parity if necessary” thus opens a
conceptual space for exploring more thoroughly the continuities of Chinese
foreign policy into the present-day world of parity-based diplomatic relations.100
98
99
Crossley notes another interesting consequence of such stereotypes. Chinese culture is
depicted as ex ante incompatible with democracy given its authoritarian past. Crossley
1992, 1476.
Hamashita 2001, 60. 100 Sverdrup-Thygeson 2012, 263.
158
The East Asian Sino-centric Order
In the end, external pressure precipitated the fundamental transformation of collective beliefs and the related political order. The combination
of international pressure, internal reform movements and individual
ideological “entrepreneurs,” combined with the available alternative
ideological framework, proved too much for the existing order.101 The
old view in which China occupied the center of a politico-cultural empire
to which others paid tribute no longer comported with the new reality.
Western norms and principles, international law, and notions such as the
balance of power provided an alternative conceptual frame that reformists
adopted and utilized to defend Chinese autonomy on Western terms.
East Asia’s adaptation to the West, however, was neither passive nor
complete. Even when the Chinese accepted Westphalian discourse and
practices under the force of arms and external pressure, Chinese inflections still permeated the process. Iver Neumann thus criticizes Gerrit
Gong who argued that China had fully accepted the Westphalian principles and practices of Western diplomacy. Conversely, Neumann suggests
that, “If that were the whole story, with no residue left, then how to
account for the fact that it is still an open question in what degree and
in which contexts China accepts these principles and practices today?”102
Furthermore, although various Chinese dynasties possessed significant
military and economic resources, it will not do to simply reduce the
complexity of relations in the East Asian sphere to balances of power.
Material power created permissive conditions, but identity and shared
cultural motifs affected how polities acted within those conditions.103
Arthur Waldron rightfully notes that various Chinese dynasties were no
stranger to power politics. But as he points out, Chinese culture has
throughout its history emphasized the importance of virtue, rites, and
proper conduct. Rulers emphasized the ideational components that justified their rule throughout Chinese history. These rituals were not simply
epiphenomenal to “real” underlying interests and power distributions.
Instead, language, values, and ritual performances were vital for crafting
and maintaining the Chinese polity. “China, arguably, is a culture with a
different architecture and a different path to the state from that found in
the West; one in which shared language, values and ritual . . . were far
101
102
103
My explanation of how the collective beliefs system changed is similar to how Mark
Blyth views changes in ideational beliefs in the realm of economics. Blyth 2002. External
pressure sets dynamics in motion that empower actors who favor change. These actors
then champion the alternative ideological framework that comports better with the new
reality.
Neumann 2011, 470. See also Gong 1984, 180.
I would thus also concur with Callahan’s argument that we need not understand the
tributary system as either entirely based on power politics or on benign Confucianism.
The interplay of both was woven into the system. Callahan 2012, 12.
The East Asian Interstate Society and the Westphalian System
159
more important in creating and maintaining the polity than was the case
elsewhere (and force, by the same token, was less important).”104
Cultural beliefs thus explain why Chosŏ n Korea continued to adhere to
Ming institutions, laws, and norms well after the Manchu dynasty displaced the Ming. The Manchu were considered culturally inferior, and
indeed the mantle of civilization had arguably fallen to Korea. For cultural
reasons as well, the Ming considered Burma inferior to Vietnam, even
though the former had displaced the latter as the more powerful state by
the sixteenth century. Unlike Burma, Vietnam had been a long-standing
tributary state. And cultural beliefs explain why Japan, given its own conceptions of hierarchy and the status of its emperor, could not be ideologically reconciled with a tributary system that would require submission to
the Chinese emperor, even if only symbolically.
Performing tribute served multiple functions to regulate interstate
relations beyond the core states as well.105 The tributary ritual signaled
which states wished to engage in close relations with China and which did
not. It served as a mechanism of coordination and clarified acquiescence
or resistance to the particular vision of regional order.
Consequently, studying the politics of East Asia reveals a remarkably
flexible pattern of relations that allowed for variation and inclusion of
multiple entities even beyond East Asia itself. Those considered in the
inner core of a Sino-centric system, Vietnam and particularly Korea,
adhered relatively closely to the collective imagination that fit with that
of the Chinese dynasties. The Japanese rulers, influenced by Confucian
ideals, nevertheless staked out their own position and tributary relations.
Yet other polities, such as the Ryukyu Islands, were part of multiple
tributary systems. The “Chinese” core itself could be appropriated by
nonnative Chinese.
Tribute also carried multiple meanings. For the inner core, it entailed
mutual recognition and legitimation. For the steppe peoples, it was a
convenient mode of structuring trade or demanding subsidies from the
Chinese Empire. For the latecomers, the Portuguese and Dutch, it was
simply a means to an end, a conduit for trade on the terms of a more
powerful state. It would be incorrect to see East Asia as a singular huband-spoke pattern dominated by a Chinese center with only Confucian
values as the singular defining characteristic.
As other empires, the Chinese Empire could be multivocal by asserting
its superiority, even in the face of material conditions that seemingly
belied actual relations. Chinese chroniclers and the elite bureaucrats
could interpret actions to fit the collective belief system. Paying tribute
104
Waldron 1996, 964.
105
Gungwu Wang 1998, 307–8.
160
The East Asian Sino-centric Order
to the nomads could be reclassified as trade. Recognition of other polities’
power could be interpreted as a sign of imperial benevolence. Reversals of
imperial territorial expansion – such as the setbacks during the QingBurmese war (1766) and Vietnamese campaigns (1788) – might be
explained as successes.
Performatively, under the maxim “heaven has divided up territories but
not peoples,” the Chinese emperor could hold on to the principle of
suzerainty. This could provide ideological legitimation for China to intervene in those countries on the principle that the emperor had the power to
appoint other rulers.106 And yet, pragmatically, and simultaneously, the
emperor could also recognize the existence of different autonomous
polities. Since the emperor was beyond doubt the ruler of all, he need
not demonstrate his superiority by formalizing his control over a given
territory. Both tributary and suzerain benefited from maintaining the
status quo, formalized and acknowledged in the tributary performative
space.
Because of the multivocality that imperial dynasties utilized to justify
their authority, and because of the flexibility in tributary relations, some
scholars have suggested that the notion of a tributary system does not
accurately capture the nature of international relations. That criticism
holds, if one adheres to a rigid, essentialist view of tributary relations with
a static and uniformly recognized center, and a static pattern of interstate
relations. Since the empirical evidence suggests otherwise, one might be
tempted to jettison the concept altogether.
However, as argued in the past two chapters, the tributary system
provided a conceptual framework in which the actors understood their
own actions as well as those of others. In this mutual understanding, there
was no contradiction in Chinese historical narratives depicting willing
subjection of numerous tributary states while in reality, the flow of trade
might be to the benefit of the tributary. As long as both parties understood
the purpose of each other’s actions, particularly in terms of domestic
legitimation on both sides, the tributary system could provide a lingua
franca to regulate affairs – even to the point of averting overt conflict for
long periods of time.
5.5.2
The Past in the Present
While I have advanced a particular interpretation of the East Asian
tributary system, I make no claim that such a system might serve as the
106
Lam 1968, 179. Zhou also briefly touches on the Chinese campaign in Burma following
the collapse of the Toungoo dynasty. Zhou 2011, 162.
The East Asian Interstate Society and the Westphalian System
161
basis for the current international order. It would be difficult to envision
contemporary states agreeing to secondary status and formal inequality.
However, historical reflections affect the policies of the present.
All historical interpretation, as Gadamer argued, inevitably involves
interjection of the contemporary into the past. Conversely, as one
Chinese scholar noted, one might also study the past to use in the present.
One prominent contemporary Chinese author, Tingyang Zhao, thus
argues that the Chinese concept of Tianxia (all under heaven) may be
deployed as an alternative to Western notions of order.107 The inclusiveness and accommodation of a Sino-centric system that combined order
with difference would be less conflictual than the Western understanding
of international relations as state anarchy. The Chinese government
similarly seeks to invoke Neo-Confucian discourse as a foundation of
harmonious domestic society and international relations.108
Consequently, the PRC downplays the existence of the older hua–yi
discourse (the distinction of civilized Chinese versus uncivilized barbarian or foreigner in favor of minzu tuanjie [unity of nationalities]).109
Similarly, “in recent years, the Chinese leadership has laboriously
preached the Confucian vision of a new world order centered on the
concept he (peace, harmony, union). Official statements constantly advocate he er bu tong (harmonious, but different) and he wei gui (peace as the
ultimate objective). Beijing believes that this rhetoric can help build and
project a pacifist cultural image for China.”110
Others have been less sanguine about such interpretations.111 In their
views, a benign reading and claims of a peaceful Sino-centric order
obscure Chinese territorial expansion, particularly during the Qing.
Even if some polities, such as Vietnam and Korea, remained relatively
free from Chinese attempts to absorb them, the same did not hold for
polities to China’s north and west. As William Callahan points out, the
Qing dynasty expanded at the expense of the peoples in the areas of
contemporary inner-Mongolia, Tibet, and Taiwan. The Zunghar
Mongols were annihilated. Overly benign readings of concepts as
Tianxia thus blur the distinction of hegemony and cosmopolitanism,
107
108
109
110
Tingyang Zhao argues that a Chinese regional system existed before the Westphalian
and can be a solution for today’s problems with a state system. Tianxia is inclusive and
seeks to avoid the binary division of self–other with the other as distinct. Zhao 2006.
Chang notes how Zhao aims to use the ancient to reform the present. Chang 2011, 28.
Acharya and Buzan 2017. As they point out, the Chinese government elides the hierarchical nature of the historical East Asian tributary system, while the PRC is simultaneously one of the strongest proponents of sovereignty and nonintervention.
Rawski 2015, 191. As she says, at the same time this created a tension between the
narrative of the history of a nation and the recognition of fifty-five minority groups (256).
Li 2011, 338. 111 Callahan 2008, 750.
162
The East Asian Sino-centric Order
and have inserted themselves into policy discourse. “Tianxia is not a posthegemonic ideal, so much as a proposal for a new hegemony.”112 Chisen
Chang criticizes Tingyang Zhao’s cosmopolitan interpretation as well:
“Tianxia did not have the universal connotations that Zhao claims, and
tianxia implied some possibilities which would certainly be unacceptable
to China today but nevertheless are not taken into account in Zhao’s
argument.”113
Consequently, for some observers, the downplaying of the imperial and
expansionist tendencies of Qing China has served to deny the aspirations
for autonomy by Tibetans and Uighurs. Not acknowledging the less
benign aspects of its imperial past might also serve as a legitimating device
for contemporary policy makers to define a more assertive Chinese foreign policy.
In this regard, Peter Perdue notes that, while comparative historical
analysis might usefully compare Qing rule with other empires, contemporary Chinese scholars and political elites eschew the term “empire.”
Nationalist historiography in the PRC as well as Taiwan rejects the term
“empire” and instead regards the Qing as a multinational state. From
their view,
Frontier peoples willingly accepted the norms of the orthodox Confucian culture
because they recognized its superiority. The Chinese empire was a universalist
civilization, not an ordinary state, because it claimed legitimacy on the basis of
humanist cultural foundations, not on the contingencies of military conquest or
material interest.114
The PRC views territories acquired during the Qing dynasty now as
intrinsic parts of China proper. An assimilationist rather than colonial
conquest narrative serves to legitimate this inclusion.115
It should come as no surprise that contemporary perceptions of the
tributary system vary widely across populations in China and other states.
A survey among Chinese, Korean, and Japanese students revealed “a
broad gap between Chinese and South Korean perceptions of their shared
tributary past. Where the Chinese students largely agreed that Chosŏ n
Korea prospered as a Chinese tributary state . . . the South Korean
112
113
114
115
Callahan 2008, 758. See also Kang on how various historical interpretations have
inserted themselves into contemporary policy circles. Kang 2010a, chapter 8.
Chang 2011, 30.
Perdue 1998, 255. For Perdue, there is little doubt that Qing China constituted a
colonial empire and shared many traits with other colonial empires. Yet, “no historian
in China today . . . would ever describe Qing relations with Mongolia or Taiwan, or Tang
relations with Vietnam as ‘colonial’.” Perdue 2009, 88.
The particular use of terms and names thus implies specific territorial claims. Rawski
2015, 259.
The East Asian Interstate Society and the Westphalian System
163
students did not. Similarly, many more South Korean than Chinese
students agreed that Koreans suffered and that tributary relations with
China were bad for Korea.”116
Studying the historical trajectory of East Asia is thus far from merely an
academic exercise. Interpretations of the past continue to cast a long
shadow into present policy debates. They also provide a mirror to the
conceptions and preconceptions of others.
Finally, I argue that studying the East Asian tributary system serves to
interrogate our own collective imagination of what the nature of political
order is or should be. The West has long been accustomed to thinking of
the ideal typical state as one that monopolizes the means of violence and
has the capacity to impose uniform rules and regulations on its society.
Commensurate with such ability, states have acquired the loyalty of their
imagined communities, their respective nations. Polities that lack uniform laws, norms, and a singular national identity fail to mobilize the
immense capacity that comes with being a successful nation-state. The
Westphalian system aims at homogeneity.117
These political developments correlated with a discourse of normalization and establishment of norms. As the Westphalian system gradually
became more articulated over the course of the seventeenth through
nineteenth centuries, a particular pattern of “normality” emerged.
Criteria for normal statehood emerged that delineated effective government, rational bureaucratic management, and national identity.
Articulation of a “normal” thus required an “abnormal Other,” a designation ascribed to uncivilized or semicivilized polities/nations in the
regions beyond Europe and America.118
Thus, while East Asian polities made significant changes in the way
they legitimated their authority, as well as changes in their interactions
with each other and the West, their classification as uncivilized remained,
with only Japan gradually becoming a member of international society.119
The normal in the Westphalian system thus entailed homogeneity and
conformity to the West’s standards. Japan, once classified as uncivilized
itself, was the most strident in adapting to this standard, but even the
Qing, and to a lesser extent Chosŏ n Korea, realized the emergence of this
criterion of “civilized” and moved toward the Western model.
116
118
119
Gries et al. 2009, 272. 117 Suzuki 2009, 178.
On normalization and normation, see Foucault 2009.
Suzuki, somewhat contrary to most of his own exposition, argues that despite significant
changes, the Qing only engaged in expedient, superficial learning. Yet at the same time,
he acknowledges that China “sought to become a powerful state by introducing Western
technology and industry.” Suzuki 2009, 178.
164
The East Asian Sino-centric Order
But looking at the Qing and earlier dynasties, we must conclude that
the key to their longevity was the opposite of homogeneity and uniformity. They sought to accommodate multiple ethnicities and races and
could tap into multiple modes of legitimation. No single trope justified
their rule, but instead they derived their authority from fusing multiple
historical traditions. We could do worse than reflect on this multivocality
of rule as we consider the current global/geopolitical condition and discourse of “failed” and “fragile” states and seek to find or impose the
Weberian nation-state in other polities. We might similarly question the
collective imagination that influences our own preconceptions regarding
the bases of international orders of the past and present.
Part III
The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
6
Lords of the Auspicious Conjunction
The Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires
and the Islamic Ecumene
Religious representations are collective representations which express
collective realities; the rites are a manner of acting which take rise in the
midst of the assembled groups and which are destined to excite, maintain or recreate certain mental states in these groups. So if the categories
are of religious origin, they ought to participate in this nature common to
all religious facts; they too should be social affairs and the product of
collective thought.
Émile Durkheim
A King is as one set on a stage, whose smallest actions and gestures, all
the people gazingly doe behold.
James I1
6.1
Introduction
Reflecting on the life and career of Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) – the
author of the universal history Muqaddimah – Albert Hourani remarked
how, despite all life’s trials, Ibn Khaldun must have found comfort in his
surroundings. His family ancestors had migrated from the Arabian peninsula to Spain in the first stages of the Arab conquests. Centuries later,
when Khaldun fell in and out of favor of his superiors, he was forced to
move to the Maghreb and then Egypt. When he sent for his family to join
him in Cairo, they drowned at sea. After meeting the famous TurcoMongol ruler Timur (Tamerlane) before the siege of Damascus, he was
robbed on his return trip to Egypt. Despite such turmoil and hardships,
Khaldun could still find comfort in a social and political order that looked
familiar.
Something was stable, however, or seemed to be. A world where a family from
southern Arabia could move to Spain, and after six centuries return nearer to its
place of origin and still find itself in familiar surroundings, had a unity which
transcended divisions of time and space.2
1
King James’s advice to his son Henry.
2
Hourani 1991, 4.
167
168
The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
Similarly John Voll remarks that Muhammad Ibn Battuta (1304–68),
whose travel logs cover much of the Islamic world, would find himself in familiar territory throughout.3 Institutions, laws, and collective
beliefs embodied in everyday practices, rituals, and even the design of
buildings and cities provided unity in a heterogeneous and diverse
Islamic ecumene.
I submit that the polities and societies that were influenced by Islam
interacted with each other within a shared ideological and political space.
There are good reasons to speak of an “Islamic world,” while fully
recognizing the wide diversity in practices, the heterogeneity of ethnic
groups, and the plurality of religious beliefs that populated the region.4
As with all such efforts, but particularly in this case, one must navigate
between Scylla, essentializing a complex phenomenon, and Charybdis,
opposing any attempts at generalization and theory building. I therefore
certainly do not suggest that there was a monolithic Islamic domain.5 The
polities and societies that occupy the Middle East, Central Asia, and South
Asia show a bewildering variety in terms of political organization, modes of
legitimating authority, and sets of beliefs. Islam was far from the only
cultural influence that permeated these societies. Yet at the same time
religion was important in providing for a common understanding of what
politics was all about, as well as informing the purposes of politics.
Similarly, we can recognize the plethora of interpretations of Christianity,
with all its theoretical disputes and violent conflicts, and yet admit that
Christianity influenced European polities in their political organization as
well as external relations. Indeed, European powers came to define interiority, the civilized nations, in opposition to the exterior “Other” largely by
such religious criteria. Within the polities discussed in this chapter, the
3
4
5
Voll 1994, 219.
Marshall Hodgson coined the term “Islamicate” that “would refer not directly to the
religion, Islam, itself, but to the social and cultural complex historically associated with
Islam and the Muslims, both among Muslims themselves and even when found among
non-Muslims.” Hodgson 1974, vol. 1, 59. He suggested another neologism, “Islamdom,”
to refer to “the society in which the Muslims and their faith are recognized as prevalent and
socially dominant” (vol. 1, 58). While sympathetic to his intent, I have opted to use the
more conventional phrase “Islamic world” or “Islamic ecumene” to refer to this broad
social and cultural complex. Moreover, Hodgson himself, while recognizing the broader
culture in which Islam was embedded, articulated the central role of Islam in this culture,
as indicated by his general prologue, which he titled “The Islamic Vision in Religion and in
Civilization.” Likewise, Albert Hourani emphasizes the importance of Islam not just as a
religion but as a culture and civilization. See Hourani 1991; Bakhash 1991, 50. Moreover,
the rulers of the polities that are the focus of this book legitimated their authority primarily,
but not exclusively, by designating themselves as defenders of the faith. Hence, I focus on
the social and political organization of the polities that occupy Islamdom in Hodgson’s
terminology.
For one critique of essentialist views, see Aydin 2017.
Lords of the Auspicious Conjunction
169
criteria of inclusion and exclusion to one’s political community were more
flexible than they were in the Western Christian states of that period.
To capture the unity and simultaneous diversity of this Islamic world is
well-nigh impossible. Over the course of a millennium Islam became a
world religion that influenced social and political orders stretching from
Spain to the islands of South East Asia. Instead, I focus on the three key
empires of the Early Modern era. Before European powers rose in ascendance, the Ottoman Empire (c. 1300–1922), the Safavid (Persian)
Empire (1502–1736), and the Mughal Empire (1526–1857) had already
established themselves in a vast region from the Balkans, across the
Middle East, to India. These were far from the only Islamic powers.
The powerful Mamluk Empire, nominally successors of the Abbasid
Empire in Baghdad that had been destroyed by Mongol forces in the
mid-thirteenth century; the Uzbeks in Central Asia; and various lesser
Islamic entities, all controlled significant resources of their own.
However, I do not aim to give a truncated view of so many diverse polities,
but to analyze how the three main empires structured their society and
politics, and to discuss how they interacted with each other as well as with
the non-Muslim European states.6
How might we then conceive of the “Islamic World” as “a unit of
analysis”? I submit that despite the vast heterogeneity of ethnic groups,
races, and even religions, Islamic society shared a common set of beliefs, a
common discourse through which they understood the world.7 William
McNeill’s choice of how to determine the boundaries of a given society
and system is particularly useful in this regard. “What is common to all
groups, surely, is a pattern of communication among members, sufficiently frequent and sufficiently standardized as to minimize surprises
and maximize congruence between expectation and experience so far as
encounters within the group itself are concerned.”8
I argue, therefore, that the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires
were part of an international society in which shared collective beliefs
about the nature of political order informed practices within and between
polities. No single hegemonic actor created the rules and norms that
informed this international society. Material conditions, the balance of
power, demographics, and environmental constraints, created permissive
6
7
8
Hodgson famously termed the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires as the “gunpowder
empires.” Hodgson 1974, vol. 3.
Gagan Sood argues that Islamicate Eurasia can be studied as a region and unit of analysis
based on the shared circulation of goods and ideas. Sood 2011. In his dissertation, Sood
2008 also emphasizes the role of shared mentalités and circulation of goods in cosmopolitan Islamic Eurasia.
McNeill 1986, 215. See also McNeill 1990. Voll suggests the Islamic world was bound as a
community of discourse, supported by a network of learning. Voll 1994, 5.
170
The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
conditions. But the goals that rulers and societies pursued derived from
their collective imagination regarding the nature of politics, and what
politics should be. A shared cognitive frame informed the rules and
norms that guided political action and legitimation of authority, rather
than any instrumental design by a hegemonic actor.
I start this chapter with a brief caution against an essentialist reading of
Islamic identity. Indeed, as this chapter will show, although Islam played an
important role in forming a collective identity, multiple influences played
their part. The next section illuminates the logic of rule in these multiethnic,
multiracial empires. To clarify the cultural basis of Islamic international
society I enter a brief discussion of its first origins. From its inception the
Islamic world divided in multiple polities and contended with diverse
interpretations regarding the legacy of Muhammad. I subsequently critique
the notion that the early modern empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and
Mughals, constituted warrior empires that were predisposed to holy war
against nonbelievers. Instead, military practices demonstrated a large variety in the organization and purposes of warfare. The next section discusses
the multivocal means of legitimation. Again, Islam played an important
role, but not to the exclusion of other sources, including significant influences from other religions and belief systems. Rulers of these empires
legitimated their authority in diverse ways, and were many things to many
people. Their flexibility in their internal organization transferred to the
relations with other states, Muslim as well as non-Muslim. Consequently,
I discuss how these empires confronted the Western colonial powers, and
the Westphalian states system in the chapter following this one.
6.2
Unity in Diversity: Recognizing Variety and Multivocality
in the Islamic Empires
Admittedly, to speak of an “Islamic World” runs certain risks. At a
superficial level, one might be tempted to misconstrue this as supporting
the view of a united Islamic civilization in distinction from and possibly
confronting the West. Reflecting on events in the last decades, even a
sophisticated observer as Raymond Aron, warned of “a revolutionary
wave, generated by the fanaticism of the prophet and the violence of the
people.” Although questionable as a serious academic premise, the
impact of Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” on political
narratives cannot be gainsaid.9 In those views friction and violence
9
Raymond Aron as quoted in Piscatori 1986, 39. A quick citation count of Samuel
Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” yields more than 10,000 citations to both article
and book. Huntington 1993, 1996.
Lords of the Auspicious Conjunction
171
occurred frequently throughout Islamic history and derived from irreconcilable fault lines separating the Muslim polities from non-Muslim.
On the other side stand Structural Realists who dismiss the relevance of
religion and collective beliefs altogether, regarding them epiphenomenal
to underlying “real” interests. Under anarchy only the distribution of
power matters, with power understood as the aggregate measure of assets
rather than as a relation between actors.
But even more sophisticated understandings of the politics and societies of Muslim dominated polities have suffered from misunderstanding
the internal nature of those polities, the relations between them, and
interactions with the non-Muslim world. As I noted in earlier chapters,
world systems theorists have tended to depict world empires as combining political hierarchy with the entire sphere of economic and cultural
interaction. In that view imperial hierarchy thus corresponded with relative autarchy and limited interaction across frontiers.10 Similarly, even
eminent scholars of the classical English School remarked that “not even
the three Islamic systems (Arab-Islamic, Mongol-Tartar, and Indian)
may be said to have formed among themselves a single international
system or international society.”11 Some scholars of the Islamic world
seem to endorse this view. Bassam Tibi, for example, argues that “ancient
state systems were not international systems.”12
Other observers suggest that relations between Muslim and non-Muslim
polities derive entirely from religion. Thus, the Islamic differentiation
between a Dar al-Harb (the House or Land of War) and a Dar al-Islam
(Land of Islam), typifies in this view the relations between the Christian
West and the Islamic Maghreb and Middle East. Similarly, clashes within
the Islamic world are reduced to age old Sunni-Shi’a tensions.
The danger of popular, but mistaken, views that bifurcate the world as
an Islamic entity versus “the rest” is a very real one. As Nihat Çelik notes,
jihad, holy war against the infidel, today tends to be viewed as a general
cause of conflict in the Middle East and between Muslims and nonMuslims. However, this neglects long periods in which Muslims and
non-Muslims engaged in peaceful transactions and coexistence.13
Perspectives that see a rigid, religiously bifurcated, world are singleminded and distort history. They largely focus on a specific aspect of what
10
11
12
13
For a critique of this view, see, e.g., Voll 1994.
Bull and Watson 1984, 3–4. See also Watson 1992, 215–16.
Tibi 1990,152, fn. 53. He assumes that an international system can only exist between
nation-states, thereby taking the modern system of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as the only form of interstate society.
Çelik 2011, 11. On how the events of 9/11 have influenced policy and perceptions in the
United States, see Lewis 2001.
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The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
in reality constituted a highly complex, heterogeneous society – flexible
and composite, and replete with apparent contradictions. Cemil Aydin
consequently argues that the idea of a united pan-Islamic world was a
creation of both Western and Islamic elites. Western scholars and politicians in the nineteenth century used the idea of a unified Islamic world to
create an oppositional and inferior “Other,” while Islamic elites used the
idea to unify the Muslim world to oppose colonial encroachment.14
While cautioning, like him, against an essentialist view of the Islamic
world, he perhaps overstates the case. The long history of the multiple
caliphates suggests that the appeal to represent the religious community,
the umma, had ideological traction, even if multiple authorities vied for
the title. Similarly, Ottomans and Mughal rulers claimed to represent the
Sunni community in its entirety.15 The notion of an ideally unified
Islamic community existed even if reality evinced a plurality of empires.
The polities of the Middle East, Central Asia, and India interacted in
myriad ways. Militarily they were sometimes rivals, at other junctures
they faced common threats. They interacted with each other on a frequent basis, more often than not recognizing each other as equals in
practice, although not always ideologically. Culturally, they were influenced by shared motifs by which to legitimate their authority and they
shared of course in a monotheistic religion as heirs to Muhammad-even if
they faced serious rifts regarding the line of succession.
In particular, Shari’a, Islamic law based on the Qur’an and the sayings
and actions of Muhammad, was important because it provided a legal
framework for all, even if local variations were superimposed. “For the
vast majority of Muslims, law has determined – and still determines today –
what Islam is.”16 Shari’a predated the modern state, and thus, in the
absence of a state with infrastructural powers, it became critical for the
functioning of society. “This dialectic of mutual dependence between the
political and the legal was to dominate the entirety of Islamic history until
the dawn of modernity.”17 In this sense it differed from the modern understanding in which the state uses law instrumentally to engage in administration, surveillance, and punishment.
To be clear, there were violent conflicts and rifts in this shared cultural
order. The succession of Muhammad formed an important issue of
contention between Sunnis and Shi’a and greatly influenced the relations
between the Sunni Ottomans and the Shi’a Safavids, who fought multiple
wars in the first half of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. One
of the reasons for this was the move from religious syncretism to a more
14
16
See Aydin 2017. 15 On the latter, see Kolodziejczyk 2012, 179.
Stewart 2013, 496. 17 Hallaq 2010, 143, 168.
173
Lords of the Auspicious Conjunction
rigid religious view that emerged with the Ottoman conquests of the
Islamic heartland in the early sixteenth century. The rise of the Safavid
dynasty which endorsed Shi’ism to the Ottomans’ east gave it added
salience.18 The Safavids and the particular brand of Shi’ism of the
Qizilbash, became the oppositional Other that also reshaped Ottoman
self-identity from a more syncretic, frontier-state ideology, to that of the
defender of the faith.19
However, one must also keep in mind that Shi’a and Sunni coexisted
peacefully and intermingled in many other settings and periods. Conflicts
between the Ottoman and Safavids do not dispel the relevance of a shared
cultural order. Even though sectarian differences played a significant role
in the century long war between Ottomans and Safavids they still shared
an Islamic and Turco-Mongol heritage. As Kaya Şahin notes,
The Ottomans and the Safavids, for instance, shared a common universe of
literary and historical references, even though their readings were colored by the
requirements of each dynasty’s political and cultural agendas. This kind of deep
cultural affinity did not connect the Ottomans to the Europeans.20
In the same manner one can recognize how Christian Europe underwent many armed conflicts and religious splits, and yet, one can discern
the relevance of Christianity and other shared beliefs. In other words, I
argue that despite differences and disagreements, similar norms and
shared principles infused the Islamic world. In short, the Islamic polities
formed an interstate society.
This collective consciousness operated at the elite level but also permeated society at large. Gagan Sood thus submits the Islamicate region
demonstrated a collective structure consisting of shared “cognitive patterns, internalized dispositions, and authoritative rules . . . These produced
and in turn were produced by practices and social associations.”21 He finds
evidence of this structure in the manner in which individuals addressed
each other in communications, in how they perceived the world, how they
worshiped, and the importance of Arabic and Persian, all of which facilitated the creation of trust networks making circulation and exchange
possible.
The unidimensional accounts in some versions of World Systems
theory and among some early English School scholars might in part be
attributed to selectively choosing among the multiple interpretations
that emerge from the historical evidence. Islamic doctrine, which scholars articulated based on their readings of the Qur’an, the words and
18
21
Kolodziejczyk 2012, 177.
Sood 2011, 121.
19
Ateş 2013, 11.
20
Şahin 2017, 228.
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The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
actions of Muhammad (the Sunna), and subsequent interpretations,
showed great variation. Theory and social practice could diverge as
well.22 Political scientists are not alone in grappling with apparent contradictions and oppositions in the Islamic world, sometimes even within
a single empire. As historians point out, at times the Ottomans legitimated their rule as ghazi warriors in service of Islam. And yet, they also
incorporated and protected a large diversity of religious groups in the
empire. Safavid and Mughal rulers on the one hand similarly professed
their adherence to the tenets of Islam. But they were also known to
indulge in parties in which the consumption of alcohol was common.
Rulers claimed to be world conquerors and world rulers. Yet they also
advocated more precise demarcation of frontiers to prevent conflicts. In
addition to such apparent contradictions, Islam interwove with Mongol,
Turkic, and other influences.
Entering such a complex society and system cannot but lead to divergent opinions even among extraordinary scholars. Not only does every
historical exercise require interpretation, replete with one’s own epistemological and methodological biases, but the historical data are far from
unambiguous. Turning to the direct source materials and the chroniclers
of that time is no panacea. As Halil Inalcik shows, the contemporary
chroniclers had reasons of their own to develop subjective historical
narratives. Some attempted to edify the general public. Others sought
to glorify a particular ruler, or social group. Yet others used narrative style
and interpretation to curry favor with the powerful.23 Bernard Lewis
similarly observes that chroniclers and ambassadors often used a stylized
genre in their reports. In so doing they became “stereotypical compositions,” rather than accurate reports of events or conditions.24
I have neither the ambition nor the qualification to adjudicate these
disputes among eminent historians and area specialists, since even the
most deeply knowledgeable specialists in the field, with archival and
linguistic expertise, cannot resolve such varied interpretations.
However, I do hope to show how this heterogeneity in practices and
beliefs was in fact informed by a particular logic of rule and a particular
logic of legitimating such rule. There were norms and principles to guide
political and social behaviors both within and between the empires, as
well as with the non-Islamic world.
22
24
See Burgis 2009, 50–51. 23 Inalcik 1960, 417.
Lewis 1982, 115–18. Lewis’s views have been challenged by some as Orientalism, as
described by Edward Said. Unfortunately, the evaluation of both scholars’ contributions
has to some extent been clouded by polemics surrounding their political views, particularly on the Israel-Palestinian question. For the vituperative nature of the debate, see Said
et al. 1982.
Lords of the Auspicious Conjunction
175
More generally I argue that studying the Islamic world provides
insights into how a regional order might be based on a shared collective
identity rather than on material dominance by a hegemonic power. The
Islamic world was never unified as a single political entity. Nevertheless,
the Islamic world cohered as an international society on the basis of a
shared paradigm of what the social and political order should look like.
This set of collective beliefs underwent multiple and continuous transformations. The early Islamic world was transformed by the Mongol
expansion. The rise of European maritime empires and an emerging
global network of trade, commerce, and military interactions set other
dynamic forces in motion. And, finally, as I will discuss, the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries heralded increasing pressures from the
European colonizing powers that led to major transformations in the
Islamic political and cultural order.
The shared cultural order, the mentalité collective, certainly was not
static. However, with all its differences, and transitions, individuals in
this international society understood each other through a lingua franca, a
set of shared ideas, narratives, metaphors, imagined historical lineage,
and of course religion.
6.3
Collective Beliefs and the Logic of Islamic Rule
Marshall Hodgson regarded the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires
as gunpowder empires in distinction from the Arab, Turkish, and Mongol
predecessors, which lacked such military technology.25 It would be
impossible, however, to limit a discussion of these empires just to the
early modern period after the advent of gunpowder weapons. The modes
of legitimation, the tropes and narratives that informed Ottoman,
Safavid, and Mughal collective beliefs find many of their origins in the
emergence of Islam in the seventh century. Too often, however, scholarship has neglected the impact of the Central Asian heritage and the
Turco-Mongolian influences on the Islamic world, particularly with
regard to the Mughals. But the Ottomans too availed themselves of
genealogies that suggested their roots in the Central Asian world. They
argued that “the Qayi clan, from which the Ottomans claimed descent,
25
Hodgson uses the term “Timurid Empire” rather than “Mughal.” The label “Mughal
Empire” refers to the view that the empire was founded by the Chaghatay Turks, believed
to be Mongols from the Syr-Oxus basin. Hodgson disagrees with that perspective arguing
that the Chaghatay were not Mongols. Instead, given that Timur was their acknowledged
founder, they should be termed Timuri, hence the name “Timurid Empire.” Hodgson
1974, vol. 3, 62, fn. 2. However, given the widespread use of “Mughal,” including among
scholars who specialize in Islamic studies, I have adopted the latter term.
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The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
derived ultimately from Oguz Khan, a legendary figure, who supposedly
conquered the world and gave rise to the 24 Turkish tribes.”26
Both influences affected the Islamic world from its inception and
throughout the existence of the three empires in question.27 I thus start
at the beginning.28
6.3.1
The Early Emergence of Islam
Muhammad was born around 570 CE in Mecca as a member of the
Quraysh tribe. Following reflection and spiritual retreat, Muhammad
advanced the claim that God had revealed to him that he was to be the
messenger of God and that he was to reveal God’s word through reciting
verses transferred to him, and later written into the Qur’an.
Challenging the established beliefs of influential groups in Mecca, he
ran afoul of some of the factions within the Quyrash tribe. Under threat he
thus fled to Medina. This relocation due to external dangers, the Hijra,
influenced later discussions regarding whether Muslims could live in nonMuslim territories, and whether Muslims could legitimately concede to
surrendering territory to non-Muslims.29
Creating an alliance in Medina, which included Jews and other tribal
members, Muhammad managed to reestablish a foothold in Mecca. A
formal agreement was reached to create a haram, a zone of peace in which
conflicts were to be settled by adjudication. This concept, the peaceful
settlement of disputes, would also continue to influence subsequent
religious and legal scholarship and political views. Could zones of peace
and agreements be signed with non-Muslims? How long were those
agreements to last?
After Muhammad died in 632 his successors were able to establish a
firm foothold in Western Arabia and gradually fan out over the Middle
East and North Africa. At the western edges, the Umayyad dynasty would
reach, and conquer, the larger portion of what is today Spain.30
The phenomenal success of this expansion might be attributed to
several factors. Albert Hourani suggests that rural areas were largely
unaffected by the conquests, at least in the early centuries of Islamic
rule. The cities by contrast, with mercantile and political interests, had
to deal with the new political order. However, as with most premodern
26
28
29
Karateke 2005, 23. 27 See particularly Balabanlilar 2007.
One cannot fully discuss developments in the early modern period without reference to
Islam’s formative period. Similarly, Michelle Burgis argues that “it is important to
recognise the primacy of early Islam and its enduring legacy on the evolution of Islamic
law.” Burgis 2009, 45.
Hourani 1991, 15–17; Lewis 1982, chapter 1. 30 Lewis 1982, 20–21.
Lords of the Auspicious Conjunction
177
capstone governments, Islamic rule left local customs and beliefs largely
unaffected, while some local elites were incorporated into the new order.31
This pattern of limited intrusion into local autonomy and inclusion of local
elites in the political order was to be a motif for subsequent Islamic rulers
over the centuries.32 “The Muslim leadership, caliphs included, acted
within a social fabric inherited from tribal Arab society in which forging
social consensus before reaching decisions or taking actions was normative
practice.”33
As the life of Muhammad demonstrated, this social and political order
was cross-cut by multiple other loyalties and communities. Tribal affiliation and kinship, replete with vendettas and intertribal friction, challenged the peace among Muslims that the Qur’an called for.
Some of these frictions were superimposed on religious differences
within Islam itself. It is well beyond this chapter to discuss the multiple
interpretations of Islamic doctrine. Suffice it to say, that religious scholarship and the Muslim community leaders had diverse understandings of
Muhammad’s legacy and Islamic doctrine. What indeed was the doctrine,
if indeed a doctrine might be discerned as a set of coherent principles,
norms, and commands? As with all religions, there were inherent tensions
between the diverse elements that informed theological interpretation
and practices. Which sources were to be used? Which circumstances
permitted for deviation or required adherence? How should religious
understanding and practice change over time?34
The Qur’an seemed to call for peace and toleration toward nonbelievers, yet also seemed to call for the extension of Islam to non-Muslim
territories. Religious scholars also differed on the relative weight of the
Qur’an compared to the Sunna, the composite practices and life of
Muhammad himself. Rulers and theologians also constantly debated
how to reconcile tolerance for heterogeneity and orthodox Islamic
theory.35
31
32
33
34
35
Hourani 1991, 23.
Following Ernest Gellner’s argument, Patricia Crone argues that agrarian societies were
basically capstone governments that ran wide but not deep. Crone 1989, 57. Her
observations that such societies revolved around personal networks and occupied a
nondefined space holds well for the Islamic empires. She further notes that the rulers of
such societies used religion as a means to enhance their limited intensive control (79).
Also see Gellner 1983.
Hallaq 2010, 152–53.
For these reasons, jurisprudence and legal interpretation overrode theology. Akhavi
2003, 546.
James Piscatori notes that the scholars of Islamic law, the ulama, are not organized in an
agreed hierarchy. And while Shi’a recognize more hierarchy than Sunni, they still divide
into three schools, the Imamis, Isma’ilis, and Zaydis, with even more offshoots. Sunni
scholars divide into four major schools: Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi, and Hanbali. Islamic
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The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
But the most consequential challenge arose from disagreement on who
could claim to be the legitimate heir to Muhammad and govern the
religious community. Over time this would become the rift between the
Sunni, who argue that the leader of the religious community should be
chosen by the community, and the Shi’a who claim that the leader should
come from the family of the prophet.36
Following the death of Muhammad, religious leadership passed to the
Rashidun caliphs, the rightfully guided companions of the Prophet. The
religious community chose these caliphs by consultation, the shura, in a
practice reminiscent of tribal custom. Abu Bakr was the first, succeeded
by Umar, Uthman, and Ali. Of these four, only Ali was a member of
Muhammad’s clan.
Dissension broke out particularly with the installation of the third caliph.
Uthman laid claim to being the rightful successor to Muhammad, following the killing of his predecessor Umar. (The latter was killed apparently
due to a matter of tribal vendetta rather than a religious issue.) The
opponents to Uthman argued instead that Ali, Muhammad’s cousin and
husband of Fatima, Muhammad’s daughter, should be the rightful heir and
thus leadership would stay with the direct descendants of Muhammad and
the Quyrash tribe.
Uthman was killed in the ensuing violence, but his cause was taken up
by Mu’awiya, the governor of Syria. To end the violence, he suggested to
the partisans of Ali that they negotiate a compromise. Ali’s willingness to
meet with Mu’awiya and negotiate, led to the defection of some of Ali’s
followers. Mu’awiya and Ali could not come to an agreement, and Ali was
subsequently assassinated. One of Ali’s sons, Hasan, supported
Mu’awiya’s claim to the caliphate. Mu’awiya (661–80) became the caliph
and leader of the subsequent Umayyad dynasty. Another son of Ali,
Husayn, and the followers of Ali, the Shi’at Ali, or Shi’a, however,
continued to contest the Umayyad claim, but Husayn was killed in the
succession struggle.
The Umayyad claim was also contested by another line. This faction
argued that Abbas, Muhammad’s uncle, was the legitimate heir to the
caliphate. Thus, for them the successors to Abbas, the Abbasids, should
be regarded as the rightful caliphs. The Abbassids managed to defeat the
Umayyads in 750 and established a powerful caliphate centered on
Baghdad which would hold until the Mongol invasions. The Umayyads
managed to establish themselves as Emirs in Spain.
36
doctrine thus acknowledges the permitted divergence of interpretations, the ikhtilaf.
Piscatori 1986, 3–7.
Hodgson 1974, vol. 3, 37–38; Hourani 1991, 25, 31–32; Savory 2003, 442.
Lords of the Auspicious Conjunction
179
The Abbassid claims were, in turn, contested by the Fatimids (those
who believed in the succession through the line of Fatima, Muhammad’s
daughter who had married Ali). The Shi’a Fatimids established a caliphate centered in Egypt in the early tenth century which would hold until
their defeat and incorporation into the Abbassid caliphate in the late
twelfth century.37
Over time the functions of the caliph underwent a transformation.
Initially, the caliph fulfilled several roles as the successor to Muhammed.
He symbolized the supremacy of Shari’a, and functioned as a military
commander, as well as spiritual leader. With the later Ottomans the title
fused with the Sultanate.
The relevance of the historical narrative carries weight for several
reasons. First, the legitimacy of political and religious authority would
often hinge on who could lay claim to being the legitimate heir to
Muhammad and thus lead the community of believers. Second, the
martyrdom of Ali and later Husayn, as well as the defection of Ali’s
followers, informs a larger narrative of Shi’a martyrdom and suffering at
the hands of Sunni Muslims.38 The Shi’a Safavid rulers thus adopted the
practice of ritually cursing the first three caliphs, Abu Bakr, Umar, and
Uthman, as well as Aisha, one of Muhammad’s wives. For the Sunni
Ottomans, however, the first three caliphs with Ali were the “righteous
caliphs.” Third, even among the Sunni Muslims religious affiliation failed
to create political unity, with various dynasties creating rival centers of
power in North Africa and Spain.
Thus, the Islamic ecumene from the very beginning had to contend
with a diversity of religious interpretations and a multitude of political
regimes. Nevertheless, Islam provided a broad means of providing cultural unity and a collective frame of reference by means of which individuals understood their world, and by means of which rulers legitimated
their authority. Arabic provided a lingua franca, even for the Persians who
read the Qur’an in Arabic. Timur Kuran thus notes that the underlying
logic was the unity of the Muslim community. “Within the House of
Islam boundaries between states had no legal status. Accordingly, the
Abbassid rulers of twelfth-century Baghdad had to treat Muslim merchants from the Seljuk principalities in Turkey exactly as they treated
local Arabs.”39 A plurality of states might have meant the absence of
hierarchy in the Islamic world, but it did not mean the absence of international society. Evaluating the first three centuries Hourani suggests:
37
38
When the Mongols conquered the Abbasid caliphate, there were already more than a
dozen polities in the Islamic ecumene. The idea of a united community of faithful, the
umma, thus never existed in practice. Ateş 2013, 10.
Faroqhi 2015, 348. 39 Kuran 2004, 171.
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The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
The disappearance of a unitary structure of government, in east and west, was not
a sign of social or cultural weakness. By now there had been created a Muslim
world held together by many links, and with many centres of power and high
culture.40
Against the background of a shared monotheism, but contested interpretations, the main Muslim empires of the premodern period thus had to contend
with three main issues that confront all composite empires.41 First, they
required some form of legitimation. Religion was one key means of gaining
it. Second, they needed to manage the religious and ethnic diversity in their
midst. And finally, they needed to engage in divide and rule politics so as to
minimize the possibility of unified revolt against the center.
These same issues would continue to play a role in the Ottoman,
Safavid, and Mughal empires throughout their existence. Indeed, all
three managed to meet these demands successfully for centuries.
Although politically divided, their shared Turco-Mongolian heritage
and particularly Islam created a sense of shared identity.42 Critically, all
three empires claimed to apply Shari’a, Islamic law.43 Even if the Safavids
contended with the Sunni Ottomans they too aimed to apply Shari’a to
bolster Islamic rule. Hence, they ascribed to the idea that a universal legal
code should apply to all Muslims.
The watchword was the restoration of Islam, conceived of as the restoration of the
true Shari’a that is, the Shari’a as expounded by the Prophet – and even more by
his first Companions – which envisaged in a precise fashion a homogeneous
society united under one leader.44
6.3.2
Men on Horseback and the Role of Warfare
In addition to Islam, the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal identities also
find their roots in the Turco-Mongol tradition that had started shortly
after the first centuries of Arab expansion.45 Early on, the Arab rulers had
enhanced their own ranks by incorporating slaves, converted or nominally
40
42
43
44
Hourani 1991, 43. 41 On these issues, see particularly Barkey 2008, 13.
Hodgson concurs that the Islamic world created a relatively integrated whole. “Despite
considerable diversity of language, custom, artistic tradition, and even religious practice,
the unity of the Dar al-Islam was a more significant fact politically then the existence of
any of the states within it.” Hodgson 1974, vol. 3, 4. However, he submits that this unity
gradually diminished, particularly after 1550, with separate cultural spheres emerging.
Yet he also suggests that even then, the regional court cultures formed part of a larger
diplomatic and cultural unity. Hodgson 1974, vol. 3, 82.
Timur Kuran submits that “a twelfth-century merchant could travel from Baghdad to
Granada, or an eighteenth-century merchant from Sarajevo to Delhi without encountering significant differences in the dominant commercial code.” Kuran 2004, 172.
Amoretti 1986, 629. 45 Balabanlilar 2007.
Lords of the Auspicious Conjunction
181
converted. In addition they started to recruit Turkic mercenaries from
Central Asia. Increasingly these Turkic forces began to dominate the
military contingents.
By the eleventh century the Seljuk Turks, who had adopted Islam, had
risen in power and started to rest political control from the Abbasid caliphs.
They fused their Turkish heritage with Persian culture as they expanded
their grasp to include Anatolia and Northeast Persia (Khorasan).
The Mongol invasions by the khans that had succeeded Chinggis
(Genghis) Khan (1162–1227) put a dramatic end to the Islamic empires
east of Egypt, exemplified by the sack of Baghdad in 1258 by Hulagu
Khan that ended the Abbasid caliphate. Many of the Mongol rulers, like
the Seljuks before them, gradually converted to the religious populations
under their control and became Muslims themselves.
In the Anatolian territories, to the east of the Byzantine Empire,
authority was contested among multiple polities. Among these frontier
principalities, the House of Osman started to rise to preeminence. In the
course of the late thirteenth century, this House managed to overtake
some of its rivals and ultimately become the Ottoman dynasty that would
rule a vast empire stretching from Hungary, through much of North
Africa, and the Middle East. Its formal end would only come in the
wake of World War I and the abolishing of the sultanate in 1922.
The Ottoman military successes are beyond doubt. In the west they
defeated some of the most powerful European empires. The conquest of
Constantinople in 1453 (soon renamed Istanbul) made them a transcontinental empire. They subsequently expanded into the Balkans, and controlled vast tracts of Central Europe. They laid siege to Vienna several
times, the siege of 1683 marking its last attempt to do so. Until the late
seventeenth century, Russian, Hungarian, and Habsburg attempts to check
their powers usually met with little success. To the east the Ottomans faced
arguably even more formidable challengers, such as those from the TurcoMongolian rulers, Timur (Tamerlane), and the later Safavid Empire.
Much has been made of the military character of the Ottoman State. By
one perspective, often associated with Paul Wittek, and thus sometimes
known as the Wittek thesis, the Ottoman state was a state geared for war.
To Wittek the ghazi, the idealized and archetypal “heroischritterlich” Islamic
march warrior figure of the Anatolian borderlands was not only the social element
around which the nascent Ottoman state crystallized, but an ideal figure whose
ethos permeates the whole subsequent history of the Ottoman state, the periodic
crises of which come to be explained by him largely in terms of deviation from the
path of Gazitum, and the inevitable consequences thereof.46
46
Heywood 1988, 15.
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The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
Others hold this view as well. Rifaat Abou-el-Haj similarly ascribes to the
argument that the Ottomans were driven by a ghazi ideology. This ideology
fused with a Quranic injunction to spread Islam by the sword and distinguished the world between the realm of Islam and the realm of war. Thus
ghazi warfare and war against the infidel, jihad, became virtually indistinguishable with the Ottoman rulers themselves defining ghazi warriors as
holy warriors. Even though el-Haj notes that ghazi ideology also allowed for
personal gain for the frontier principalities, he suggests that “both in theory
and in fact, the Ottoman dynasty, until the treaties of Carlowitz (1699) and
Istanbul (1700), maintained the ideology of the Ghazi tradition.”47 John
Guilmartin notes that the Ottomans considered themselves always justified
to wage war. “A permanent state of war was considered to exist between the
Islamic state, the darülîslam . . . and the rest of the world, the darülharb . . .
they considered themselves always justified – and always at war.”48
Similarly, the eminent Ottomanist Halil Inalcik emphasized the importance of holy war. “The ideal of gâza, Holy War, was an important factor in
the foundation and development of the Ottoman state. Society in the
frontier principalities conformed to a particular cultural pattern, imbued
with the ideal of continuous Holy War and continuous expansion of the
Dârülislâm – the realms of Islam – until they covered the whole world.”49
Likewise, Bernard Lewis notes how a fourteenth-century chronicler refers
to the ghazi “as the instrument of God’s religion . . . God’s sweeper who
cleanses the earth of the filth of polytheism . . . God’s sure fire sword.”50
Early Ottoman rulers would sometimes refer to themselves as Leader of the
Ghazis, frontier fighters in holy war. The idea that the Ottomans saw
themselves as ghazi warriors thus has supporters among many respected
scholars of the Muslim world, although Hanil Inalcik subscribed to that
view perhaps less monochromatically than Wittek.
However, the “ghazi thesis” – the view that the early Ottoman Empire
was primarily an organization centered on spreading the Dar al-Islam by
violence – deserves further scrutiny. Together with the perspective that
Islamic doctrine holds to a bifurcated worldview of Muslims versus nonMuslims, it influences our perspectives and evaluation of the Islamic
world to this very day.
More recent scholarship has critiqued the “Wittek perspective.” These
alternative perspectives illuminate the diverse aspects of Ottoman rule.
47
48
50
Abou-el Haj 1969, 469. Regarding the Treaty of Carlowitz, see Kurat and Bromley 1976,
198–99. For a general discussion of the concept of jihad, see Kelsay 2013. Makram Abbès
argues one must de-essentialize the concept of jihad and the concept of war in Islam more
generally. Abbès 2014.
Guilmartin 1988, 726. 49 Inalcik as quoted by Káldy-Nagy 1979–80, 469.
Lewis 1982, 29.
Lords of the Auspicious Conjunction
183
They challenge both the rigorous dichotomy of two cultures continuously
at war, as well as the underlying reasons for the wars between the
Ottomans and their neighbors.
First, the early Ottomans must be understood within the general framework of frontier interaction. As in all frontier societies, the frontier hardly
demarcated a closed impermeable boundary. To the contrary, trade
flowed across the frontier, and people intermarried across ethnicities
and religions.51 Karen Barkey argues convincingly that the early House
of Osman was so successful exactly because their network of personal ties
included diverse ethnic and religious groups. They could work interstitially across the frontier.52
Violent conflict in everyday life was present. But while armed groups
confronted each other they did not necessarily do so in the style of set
piece battles to settle religious differences. True to their nomadic past, the
conflicts, deadly as they were at times, resembled more the hit and run
raids of nomadic tribes. Raiding to steal camels, horses, and slaves was
part of a way of life.53
How might one reconcile these views that picture the Ottomans as
religiously motivated soldiers of Allah, and alternatively as more
traditional raiding groups? Linda Darling provides one of the most
convincing accounts. She suggests we distinguish between jihad,
the holy war formally authorized by the Shaykh al-Islam and the
ghaza border warfare across the frontier. The latter was far less
structured or organized. Group boundaries could be fluid. Christian
soldiers at times could join with Muslims if booty and profit seemed
more readily available with a given leader, regardless of his religious
background.
The heterogeneous nature of Ottoman armies and alliances, mixing Christians
with Muslims and often directed against co-religionists, their focus on booty
and territorial expansion rather than conversion, and elements of unorthodoxy
or even shamanism in Ottoman religious practice argue against literal readings
of the portrayal of the early Ottomans as Islamic holy warriors. The construction of the Ottomans as ghâzis is now often considered to be a later overlay.54
51
52
53
54
No sense of exclusive control over territory existed. Power over people proved to be as
important as power over territory. Faroqhi 2015, 301. Doumanis shows that recent
scholarship demonstrates that the Ottomans frequently intermarried with non-Muslims
despite the notion of ghaza. They were adept at handling the middle ground between
Islamic and Christian worlds. Doumanis 2006, 954–56.
Barkey 2008, 39–41.
Darling notes that ghaza resembled ghazw, the pre-Islamic practice of camel raiding.
Darling 2000, 149. On the discussion of Islamic doctrine and jihad, see also Khadduri
1956, 360.
Darling 2000, 135.
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Káldy-Nagy concurs with Darling, even though he does not distinguish
ghazi war from jihad. Like Darling he suggests that chroniclers used the
term ghazi to describe religious motivations where none existed.55 In the
formal understanding of jihad the doctrine combined several features: a
collective obligation of the Muslim community to volunteer for holy war
against non-Muslims; collective defense against non-Muslim invaders;
and approval by the caliph that jihad was legitimate.56
The label of ghazi warrior thus overlay existing practices that had their
origins in the Turkish historical legacy. The Ottoman rulers would at
times refer to themselves as Ghazis, but only began to use the title after
they started to expand into Europe after the mid-fourteenth century.57
The reconstruction of ghazi raiding as holy war is a result of later historiography and political interests. These narratives retold border raiding in
the form of epic accounts.58
But more importantly, the religious scholars, the ulama, had a vested
interest in controlling and steering border warfare toward their own ends.
Political leaders in turn used the ghazi narrative to legitimate their rule,
retold through a framework that comported more with Islamic doctrine.59
Karen Barkey, similarly, notes how the ghaza narrative demonstrates the
“multivocality of the Turkish raiders and Ottoman conquerors.”60 Darling
concludes,
As an ideology, ghaza was flexible enough to be represented as an orthodox
Islamic activity to/by the “ulama,” an unorthodox activity to/by antinomian
Sufis, an economic activity to/by tribesmen, and a political activity to/by aspiring
rulers. As such, it may have been the most powerful and inclusive unifying device
available to conquerors on the frontier, more so than tribalism, origin, religion,
language, or culture.61
One must also recognize that the Ottoman military organization did
not consist of a unified body of ghazi warriors. It was made up of different
55
56
58
59
61
Káldy-Nagy 1979–80, 470. Indeed, Parvin and Somer submit that “Dar al-Islam may
have evolved as a means of harnessing the preexistent social forces operating among the
tribes well before the advent of Islam.” Parvin and Sommer 1980, 8.
Káldy-Nagy 1979–80, 467. 57 Darling 2000, 160.
One might think of similar epics in the West, such as those recounting El-Cid, who fought
for both Christian and Muslim rulers in Spain, and whose story even generated a
Hollywood version. Even during the crusades, Muslim rulers did not regard the invaders
as part of a religious confrontation of Christians and Muslims, since Christians and Jews
lived within Muslim-held territories. Later historiography created that image as a defensive reaction against the West in the late eighteenth century. Akhavi 2003, 551.
Darling 2000, 139–42, 150–51. 60 Barkey 2008, 59.
Darling 2000, 157. Said Mahmoudi likewise notes that Islamic views on the use of force
are not uniform and that such diversity of views continues to this day. The diversity of
doctrinal sources, the various juridical schools, political expediency, individual interpretations, and, recently, international law have all influenced these views. Mahmoudi 2005.
Lords of the Auspicious Conjunction
185
components, which, as with any complex organization, had various interests in waging war.62
Ottoman organization distinguished the elite service caste from regular subjects. This caste, the askeri, had privileges which set them apart
from the regular population. They had the sole right to bear arms and
receive revenues from land grants. The askeri included those to whom
the Sultan had delegated authority by an imperial diploma, which could
encompass court officials, members of the military, civil servants, and
the ulama.63
The Ottoman army as well consisted of diverse elements and had two
components, the central army and a provincial army. With regard to the
central army the sultan’s personal slave army, the kul, provided the
mainstay. Among these the Janissaries occupied a special position as the
sultan’s elite infantry, augmented by several cavalry units. The corps
numbered roughly 10,000 in 1480. By the late seventeenth century they
had increased in strength to about 54,000.64 Considered part of the
monarch’s household, they were educated in Turkic and converted to
Islam. Forbidden to marry, they became entirely dependent on, and loyal
to, the sultan. “Paid by the treasury, they were at the disposal of the
monarch without reservation, in contrast to the holders of military land
grants, with their far-ramifying connections.”65
Strictly controlled by the sultan alone, these soldiers were conscripted
from the Christian populations in the Balkan territories by the devshirme.
The devshirme obligated Christians in the Ottoman territories to surrender their sons between the ages eight to twenty for military training and
religious conversion.66 To limit extraordinary emotional suffering and
economic hardship, the devshirme would only take one son per family and
exempt families who only had one son. The devshirme continued until the
mid-seventeenth century when Ahmed II (1691–95) formally ended the
practice although it was essentially discontinued by one of his predecessors (Murad IV) half a century earlier.67
No doubt the hardship on Christian families was immense, but conversely the devshirme also allowed Christian boys to rise through military
and administrative ranks. For some this was therefore perceived as an
opportunity for career advancement.68 Tellingly, when large groups of
62
64
65
68
For an overview of the Ottoman military, see Fodor 2016. 63 Barkey 1994, 30.
Barkey 1994, 35, fn. 34. Inalcik suggests that the Janissary strength at the beginning of
Mehmed II’s rule (r. 1444–46, 1451–81) was approximately 4,000–5,000 and, by the
end of his reign, in the 10,000–12,000 range. Halil Inalcik 1960, 426. For a general
discussion of the Janissaries, see Inalcik 1976, 46–47; and Barkey 2008, 76–77, 95.
Hodgson 1974, vol. 3, 100, 102. 66 Barkey 1994, 31. 67 Barkey 2008, 123–24.
See Parry 1976, 103–4.
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individuals in Bosnia converted to Islam, many requested that they nevertheless be included in the devshirme.69
The other major component of military organization, the provincial
army, consisted mainly of the cavalry, the sipahi. In exchange for service
the sipahi were given timar, landholdings from which the sipahi could draw
revenue. By the early seventeenth century, the number of timar holders
ranged from 20,000 to 30,000.70 Unlike the feudal nobility in Europe,
however, the landholdings were not hereditary. A nobility with a power
basis in hereditary landownership thus did not emerge as a counterweight
to the sultan.
The Ottoman army would gather as one unit in the capital and be led
personally by the sultan. Campaigns would commence in spring and
continue to the fall. Due to the inability to retain an army in the field
during winter, campaigns had to be concluded by then.71 The presence of
the sultan thus reaffirmed the Turco-Mongolian heritage of the political
ruler as the tribal war leader, now recast as the military commander. Over
time, the grand vizier took on the role previously occupied by the sultan –
who by then used multiple titles as emperor and pâdishâh, the supreme
king of kings.
In addition to understanding that various groups had diverse interests
in warfare, one must recognize the ambiguity of the historical record.
Guilmartin suggests that the Ottomans were perpetually engaged in war,
“from the capture of Constantinople in 1453 to the Treaty of ZsitvaTorok in 1606, the Ottoman state was, to all practical intents and purposes, continuously at war.” That said, he also admits that between the
battles of Mohacs (1526) and Mezökeresztes (1596), “there was not a
major clash of the Ottoman and Christian field armies in the Balkans.”72
One might thus conclude that peaceful relations could pertain between
Christian and Ottoman rulers, even in the highly contested Balkan zone,
giving further pause to the notion of perennial jihad.
The Ottoman military exploits, therefore, cannot be reduced to a
simple reading of holy war. The earlier centuries of border raiding need
to be distinguished from the more formalized and larger military campaigns that the Ottomans utilized in their later conquest of the Byzantine
Empire and the subsequent wars with European powers, most notably the
69
71
72
Barkey 2008, 127. 70 Barkey 1994, 71.
Guilmartin 1988, 734. William McNeill also suggests that particularly cavalry was
limited in the distance that could be covered since it required a return to grazing fields
for the winter. McNeill 1982. As a consequence, a two-front war was also impossible; see
Hodgson 1974, vol. 3, 114. Severi notes how the sipahi would want to return to manage
their domains. Severi 2001, 214–15.
Guilmartin 1988, 736–37.
Lords of the Auspicious Conjunction
187
Habsburgs. The military revolution that took place in Europe from the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries onward similarly affected the
Ottomans. Whereas ad-hoc troop contingents and border warfare had
sufficed in the earlier centuries, the later Ottoman armed forces consisted
of a standing army. In general the Ottoman state had started to change in
the course of sixteenth century from a house of conquest in its earlier
centuries to a house of rule along patrimonial lines.73
A similar conclusion emerges from an analysis of the Safavid and
Mughal empires. The Safavid military organization shared some traits
with the Ottoman.74 From its foundation by Shah Ismail I (r. 1501–24)
the Safavid Empire relied heavily on the Turkmen troops that had allowed
him to wrest control over much of what is today Iran. Over time his
successors also gained territories on the eastern flank of the Ottoman
Empire as well as gain conquests in the Southern Caucasus.
Among the Turkmen troops the Qizilbash stood out as the shock troops
of the empire.75 Consisting of several tribes, but united by their Shi’a
beliefs, these troops regarded Shah Ismail as the Mahdi, the imam who
would emerge to save mankind. In reward for their service the Qizilbash
leaders were given large lands, which they then divided among their
followers. However, the Qizilbash leaders gradually came to use these as
a power base of their own, and claimed almost to corule with the shah,
giving themselves the title of sultan.
The Safavid rulers were cognizant of the dangers of the Qizilbash as a
potential rival to the Shah’s power. To meet that danger they created
another military unit consisting of slaves, the Ghulam.76 The unit
emerged particularly under Shah Abbas and his successor Tashmasp I
in the latter part of the sixteenth century, after the conquests of Georgia
and Armenia. The Ghulam consisted largely of converted Christians from
those areas. Like the Janissary corps they were largely infantry, and over
the course of the seventeenth century could rise to the highest ranks of
Safavid administration. Over time, like the Ottomans, the Safavids would
develop as a military patronage state.77
The Mughal army was structured somewhat differently from the
Ottoman and Safavid.78 Unlike the Ottoman Janissaries and the Safavid
Ghulam, the emperor did not utilize slave forces. Instead he relied on a
system in which government officials, the mansabdar would recruit a
73
74
75
76
Barkey 1994, 26.
Suraiya Faroqhi draws attention to the importance of tribal groups in the Safavid Empire,
in contrast to their relatively weak position in the Ottoman. Faroqhi 2015, 352–55.
On the Safavid army, see Haneda 1986, 503–6. See also Matthee 2010, 246; Necipoğlu
1993, 308; Szuppe 1997, 314.
Matthee 2010, 245. 77 Hodgson 1974, vol. 3, 25. 78 Markovits 2016.
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number of troops for service. The rank of the mansabdar would be
reflected in the number of troops he could raise. As with the Ottomans,
even though the mansabdar often had a noble background, they did not
become a feudal, hereditary aristocracy as was the case in Europe.
The absence of a slave military was partially due to the nature of a
competitive labor market and the availability of a large pool of individuals
who made military service their vocation. As a result of this competition,
pay for cavalry was three to four times higher than the pay in the Ottoman
and Safavid empires.79
Given the market-like dynamics driving recruitment we might, therefore, wonder whether the ghazi ideology was very prominent. Indeed, the
very concept might have undergone a change. Thus, ghaza in India also
emerges as a term for warfare against the Mongols, and is used by both
Hindus and Muslims. Ghaza sometimes also meant defensive warfare as
opposed to its conceptualization on the Anatolian frontier.80
This discussion of the various militaries of these three empires yields
several important observations. First, the composite nature of these organizations reveals that the armies were not homogeneous entities consisting of ghazi warriors. Although there were certainly elements within the
armies that contained elite shock troops motivated by religious zeal,
others joined or were forced to join for multiple motives: career advancement; booty; or remuneration in pay or land.
Moreover, the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal rulers deliberately
divided the military in countervailing groups. The Janissaries could act
as counterweight to the sipahi, the ghulam could check the influence of the
Qizilbash. The structure of the army was thus not just directed against
external infidels, as the Wittek thesis might suggest, but was also intended
to keep the sultans and shahs safe from internal rivals.
Furthermore, religious rhetoric could sometimes be instrumentally
deployed. Sometimes religious obligation was also trumped by other
motives.
When the sultans called their troops to a jihad, so many people lacked the religious
commitment and sense of duty necessary to undertake the holy war that severe
79
80
The Mughal army consisted of free men who enlisted from a very large labor pool. Hence,
it was a very diverse army of all sorts of tradesmen, combatants, and servants, who were
recruited through military brokers and mercenary captains (jama-dar). Gommans 1995,
263–64. Since they were mercenaries, they tended to be unreliable and could readily
switch sides for a price. Gordon argues that loot was the common reward for military
service in the early Mughal campaigns. Gradually, military activity emerged as an
entrepreneurial activity with large amounts of individuals willing to be hired out. In
return they would gain familial rights to revenue (watan). These watan holders became
the core cavalry nobility. Gordon 1998, 233; also see Blake 1979, 84.
Darling 2000, 148.
Lords of the Auspicious Conjunction
189
punishment had to be threatened against those who did not participate. This was
especially true of timar-holders [land-holding elites], who were often reluctant to
leave their peaceful homes for the uncertain hope of booty.81
This is not to say that religion had little or no influence. We might, for
example, equally reflect on the multiple material reasons that have been
given for the Christian crusades that commenced from the late eleventh
century on. Among those reasons given by scholars are: changed inheritance patterns (with primogeniture becoming the norm); increased revenue from ecclesiastical holdings; legitimation for kingship by the papacy;
a more powerful papal organization following the Investiture conflict; and
diminished raiding by Magyars and Vikings. All of these provide partial
explanations of why the Crusades erupted and continued for over two
centuries. Yet, none of these precludes that crusading was at least in part
also driven by genuine religious ideals. Similarly, we need not deny
genuine religious motives on the part of Muslim rulers while still recognizing other reasons why these Islamic empires engaged in war.
Finally, one should keep in mind that warfare was not just directed at
the Dar al-Harb. Practice belied orthodox doctrine. Muslims fought their
coreligionists as well. We already noted the religious conflicts at the
inception of the religion. Similarly, the converted Turkic Seljuks waged
war on fellow Muslims, the Ghaznavids.82 The Ottomans fought the
Safavids. And the Mughals came to power by wresting authority from
rival Islamic polities in the wake of the Delhi Sultanate.
Importantly some scholars contend that warfare among the various
Muslim polities was less frequent and intense than in Europe. Jos
Gommans interestingly claims that the notion of total warfare is more
appropriate for the Western way of warfare than it is for the Islamic style,
at least as far as the Mughal mode of war was concerned. “European
warfare had gradually become the exclusive domain of the modern
nation-state, motivated by such familiar requisites like national honour
and national interests. As a result, the European way of warfare became
gradually less open to intrigue and sedition and, therefore, less open to
peaceful accommodation and settlement.”83
In sum, these observations belie a monochromatic reading of Islamic
forces as holy warriors oriented to the defeat of Christian Europe.
81
82
83
Káldy-Nagy 1979–80, 472. Celik suggests that realpolitik and material interests in trade
were inevitably part of interreligious relations. Çelik 2011, 10–11.
Káldy-Nagy 1979–80, 467.
Gommans 1995, 279. André Wink similarly suggests that the divisions among Islamic
states should be understood in terms of schisms (fitna). Fitna entailed the manipulation
of alliances by conciliation, gift giving, sowing dissension, with the actual use of force only
as a secondary resort. Wink 1984, 280.
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The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
Viewing the world as strictly divided between an Islamic realm (Dar alIslam) and a realm of war and conflict (Dar al-Harb), ignores the fluidity
and flexibility of interactions between the Islamic and Christian societies, and ignores the complexity of interactions within the Islamic world
itself.
6.3.3
Manifesting and Legitimating Authority
The multiple means by which the Islamic rulers legitimated their authority and made their authority manifest provides further evidence of their
flexibility. As all empires that incorporate vast regions with many different
ethnic, religious, and racial groups, the Islamic empires had to find means
of accommodation with their subject populations. As noted, from the very
beginning of Arab expansion, diverse groups, which shared neither religion nor ethnicity with their conquerors, had to be organizationally
incorporated rather than ruled by force alone. Muslim rulers thus pursued multiple means of legitimation.
Consequently, the Arab rulers who fanned out of the Arabian
Peninsula to North Africa, Spain, and the Sassanid Empire in the East,
issued their own coin as marks of sovereignty from the very beginning.
They did so with very particular political aims in mind. Thus, Abd alMalik, the fifth Umayyad caliph (r. 685–705), issued gold and silver coins
to rival the gold coins that were prominently issued by the Byzantines, and
the silver ones used in the Sassanid Empire. The image of al-Malik on
these coins demonstrated that he was indeed the legitimate sovereign,
conveyed by his right to issue coin.
Epigrams on the coins also served other goals. They contained the
affirmation of faith, the shahada, proclaiming the oneness of God. This
affirmation served to signify their legitimate title as caliphs, leaders of
the religious community. With the verse “there is no god except God.
Muhammad is the prophet of God,” they also challenged the Christian
notion of the Trinity. Other epigrams duplicated sayings from the
Dome of the Rock, signifying the arrival of Islam as the dominant
religion. “Far more than inscribing political titles or pious phrases on
coin age, the incorporation of Qur’anic verses reflected the growing
centrality of the Qur’an as a source of authority and for a Muslim’s
sense of identity.”84
At the same time they also validated their authority by demonstrating
their specific identity as Islamic rulers with legal codes based on the Shari’a,
and its primary sources, the Qur’an and hadith (sayings and actions of the
84
Bacharach 2010, 25; Hourani 1991, 27–28.
Lords of the Auspicious Conjunction
191
prophet Muhammad). Sultans and shahs ruled as vice-regents of God and
administrators of justice. The Abbasid dynasty (750–1258), which had
overthrown the Umayyads, “claimed to rule by divine authority as a
member of the Prophet’s family.”85
The Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal rulers similarly availed themselves
of religious legitimation as protectors of the faith. The Ottomans were
initially reluctant to claim the title of caliph given that the title had shifted
from the Abbasids to the Mamluk dynasty in Cairo when Baghdad fell to
the Mongols. Only after the Ottomans had defeated the Mamluk dynasty
in 1517 did they lay claim to the title of caliph. Expansion into Arabia gave
the Ottomans control over Mecca and Medina, allowing them to enhance
their status as protectors of the holy sites.86
Survival in the succession conflicts in the Ottoman Empire, due to the
lack of established primogeniture, was further taken as an indicator of
divine favor. The victor among the internecine family conflicts was no
doubt the one favored by Allah.87 This was a principle held among the
Mughals as well.
The Safavids, similarly, sought to strengthen their authority by invoking religious motifs. They claimed a direct lineage to the twelve imams.88
Ismail I (1487–1524) the founder of the dynasty was regarded as a Sufi
mystic (pir) himself. The Safavids might have been more ardent in this
than their Islamic counterparts. Arguably, the Ottomans and Mughals
did not have the same need to focus excessively on religious legitimation.
Sunni were not a beleaguered minority, and they were more syncretic in
order to incorporate diverse religious groups into the empire. The Shi’a
Safavids, by contrast, presented themselves as divine rulers with little
hesitation, and sought the conversion of the Sunni in their realm. Shah
Tahmasp I (r. 1524–76), the successor to Ismail, “continued to be
venerated as a god-like ruler.”89 They were keen to refer to (fabricated)
genealogies that linked the shah directly to the seventh Imam. “Unlike the
Ottoman sultan, who was no more than a modest servant in the service of
85
86
87
88
Hourani 1991, 36.
Matthee 2010, 236. Ateş 2013, 11. Kolodziejczyk argues that Barkey underrates the role
of Islam in the early Ottoman state and takes an instrumental view of religion.
Kolodziejczyk 2012, 176, fn. 3. Barkey notes, for example, that “religion as institution
would help administer the empire” and that “the Ottoman rulers embarked on a bid to
build . . . an educational system that would be controlled by the state.” Barkey 2008, 105,
110. However, at other junctures, she refers to the more expansive view of religion as
framing one’s worldview and follows Clifford Geertz in arguing that religion provides
frames of perception and guides for action (107). My views conform to the latter position.
Hodgson 1974, vol. 3, 26. However, except for a brief period during Süleyman, the
Ottoman ruler did not claim semidivine status for himself. Necipoğlu 1993, 305.
Hodgson 1974, vol. 3, 30–31; Matthee 2010, 237. 89 Matthee 2010, 247.
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Sunni Islam, the Safavid ruler claimed to be a supernatural being whose
powers blessed whatever he touched.”90
Mughal rulers as well invoked their credentials as defenders of Islam.
Abûlfazl, the biographer and confident of Akbar I (1542–1605) described
him as the true king ruling by the grace of god. Akbar was king but he was
a pir, a Sufi master, as well.91 Given the large non-Muslim population, the
Mughal rulers, however, were extremely syncretic in their religious
policies.
But the rulers of these empires did not just justify their rule as defenders
of the faith alone. The Ottomans, confronted with a large Christian
population after the conquest of Constantinople, seized the opportunity
to depict themselves as heirs to the Byzantine Empire, and thus ultimately
also heirs to classical Rome itself. Mehmed the conqueror (1432–81) and
his heirs thus became “the emperor of two continents.” The Ottomans
from then on could claim the titles of Kaysar (Caesar), Basileus (the
Byzantine imperial title), Padisha of Constantinople, or Padishah-I
Rum (Emperor of Constantinople or Emperor of Rome).92
Their claims to authority manifested themselves also in the appropriation of Byzantine sites of authority. As was the case for his Byzantine
predecessor, the Hippodrome in Constantinople became the site of public display. The Ottoman palace was built on the site of the Byzantine
palace for the same reason.
The transferal of power from the Basileus to the Ottoman Padishah, also
had an added advantage, since the Byzantine emperor approved the election
of the Patriarch of Constantinople. By assuming the mantle of the Byzantine
emperor, the Ottomans could now claim this authority for themselves, and
indeed they made the Patriarch of Istanbul the primus inter pares over the
other patriarchs.93 With their control of Constantinople and Jerusalem, the
Ottomans effectively became the patrons of the Orthodox Church in most of
the Middle East.
The Ottoman rulers thus adopted multiple titles and used those appropriate to the intended audience. Middle East and Central Asian traditions
thus required the use of the Arabic Sultan; the title Khan linked them to
Chinggis Khan (even though they were not of Chinggisid descent); Shah
referred to the pre-Islamic Persian rulers; and Caliph suggested their rule
over the Islamic umma.94
90
92
93
94
Necipoğlu 1993, 309. 91 Hodgson 1974, vol. 3, 73, 75, 79.
Barkey 2008, 82–83; Lewis 1982, 29; Necipoğlu 1993, 305.
See particularly Hattox 2000; Barkey 2008, 134.
Regarding the Ottoman sultan’s many titles and personalities, see Kolodziejczyk 2012,
175–93. He notes as well that the name of Sultan Süleyman (Salomon) equated the
sultan with the ancient Jewish king. Kolodziejczyk 2012, 190.
Lords of the Auspicious Conjunction
193
The rulers of all three empires thus also invoked their Turkic heritage,
linking them to epic heroes and to the illustrious leaders of the tribal
confederacies. Their leadership in war was extolled by claiming a lineage
to the great world conquerors, specifically the three universally recognized world conquerors: Alexander the Great, Chinggis (Genghis) Khan
and Timur. Invoking such an illustrious lineage, especially the connection
to Timur, was specifically preeminent among the Safavids and Mughals
but the Ottomans on occasion would also invoke such claims, particularly
under Selim (r. 1512–20) and Süleyman I (r. 1520–66).
Although Süleyman’s reign is sometimes viewed as the beginning of a
more bureaucratic administrative system, Cornell Fleischer shows that
his reign was rather ad-hoc, until roughly 1550, and that he deliberately
searched for means to legitimate his authority. If he could link himself
successfully with Alexander or Chinggis Khan this would convey a legitimate claim to universal sovereignty.
Süleyman and his court officials, however, went even further by capitalizing on the apocalyptic tenor of the time. Ottoman success in taking
Constantinople and the Balkans was taken as an indicator of the coming
universal empire and final victory of Islam. This was also the tenth
century in the Islamic calendar giving credence to millenarian views.
Finally, the planets were aligned favorably with the conjunction of
Jupiter and Saturn. He was the Sahib Qiran, the lord of the auspicious
conjunction. Süleyman’s dispensation of universal justice thus demonstrated his position as the ruler who would bring universal order to chaos.
Süleyman’s emphasis . . . upon the omnipresent and perfected character of his
legislative persona constituted an apocalyptic gesture intended to show that his
age, in the tenth century of the Muslim era, was in fact the Millennium, and to
suggest that he himself was the messianic ruler who would fill the world with
justice as it had been filled with injustice.95
As the Ottomans, Safavid identity also had a Turkic-Mongolian strand,
but it joined with Iranian-Muslim influences.96 Both of these imbricated
each other and created a distinct cultural hybridity. Timurid steppe
traditions mingled with Iranian urban sensibilities; the Mongol legal
code (yasa) intermeshed with the Shari’a; linguistically, Turkic and
Persian were both used.
They were equally keen to demonstrate their connections to the
Timurid dynasty. While scholarship has tended to emphasize the image
of Timur as a cruel conqueror, “This image ignores an important strand
95
96
Fleischer 1992, 164. Also see Matthee 2010, 236–37. Ottoman poetry also served as a
means to link the Ottoman dynasty with Alexander the Great. Darling 2000, 161–62.
Szuppe 1997, 313.
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The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
of social memory that revered Timur as the charismatic ‘Lord of
Conjunction’ (Sahib Qiran) that made him a central object of admiration
and imitation for later Muslim sovereigns.”97 Particularly important in
this regard were chronicles of the second half of the sixteenth century that
recounted the alleged visit by Timur to the founders of the Safavid line.
Various accounts have Timur paying homage to Sadr al-Din Safavi, and
his son Khawaja Ali Safavi (d. 1427). The chronicles report that Timur
had given the Safavid founder a waqf by means of which they were entitled
to the territories from Turkey to Central Asia, as well as the revenues from
those lands.98
Other chroniclers describe the Safavid origins by foundational myths.
They note that court officials of Timur’s administration had dreams in
which the first Imam, Ali, foretold the rise of the Safavid dynasty. Thus, in
one move, the Safavids were linked to the founding of Shi’a religion and
given the imprimatur of the great conqueror Timur.
The Shah, therefore, was not merely a ruler as any other. He too was
depicted as the Sahib Qiran, the lord of auspicious conjunction, and the
one who would conquer the world and dispense universal justice.99 The
planets were aligned as they had been with the recognized earlier SahibQirans, Alexander the Great and Timur.
The Mughal rulers were not to be outdone. Akbar too embraced
lionizing accounts that announced him as the lord of the auspicious
conjunction.100 Akbar was the perfect man, the qutb. In addition, multiple
ceremonies and rituals were adopted and adapted to exalt his greatness.
Zoroastrian and Hindu rituals, such as the cult of fire and sun, were
employed to signify Akbar as the divine light personified.101 Esoteric
interpretations noted that in salutations, the opening greeting “Allah is
great,” and the response, which included the first name of Akbar, contained exactly the same number of letters – a miracle indeed.
The school he created also provided a platform to debate and study
many religious views. Sufi, Sunni, and Shi’a theologians intermingled
with other religions. This further enhanced Akbar’s standing as a protector of the spiritual realms with broad appeal beyond the Muslim
faithful.102
97
98
99
100
101
Moin 2012, 23. The image of epochal upheaval and transformation became particularly
salient as the millennium approached (by the Islamic calendar.)
Szuppe 1997, 317–18. A waqf was a donation, usually a charitable endowment.
Matthee 2010; Necipoğlu 1993, 314; Szuppe 1997, 324.
The chronicles of Akbar thus dedicated a large amount of space to describing the
emperor’s horoscope. Moin 2012, 13. The planetary alignments indicated his exulted
status.
Ahmad 1961; Alam 1997, 122. 102 Kinra 2013, 275.
Lords of the Auspicious Conjunction
195
Doctrinal innovation, edifying chronicles, and genealogical studies
were augmented with material and physical displays to embody the
authority of the rulers. As in the very first Arab dynasties architectural
design demonstrated a unity of collective imagination that emanated from
Islamic motifs. Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal rulers alike turned to
monumental architecture to signify the eternal nature of Islam and demonstrate their credentials as protectors of the faith.103 “The Ottoman state
employed a centrally directed group of royal architects . . . to administer
and execute state-sponsored architectural projects.”104
Rulers used basic motifs but they extended these designs to signal their
authority as well as the preeminence of Islam over the religions of the
conquered people. The Dome of the Rock was thus deliberately built on
the site of the Temple of Jerusalem. The various dynasties would similarly
engage in “competitive display,” sponsoring mosques and minarets that
outdid those of rival Muslim leaders. The Safavid rulers, Tahmasp and
Abbas I, consciously chose for monumental architecture in styles that
were widely admired, such as the designs in Herat.105
Palace architecture further reveals differences among the rulers, particularly as they moved to strengthen central authority within their empires.
The three main palaces in the respective empires suggest how architectural styles reflected their different bases of legitimation.
These vast imperial palaces, conceived as architectural metaphors for three patrimonial-bureaucratic empires with their hierarchical organization of state functions around public, semi-public, and private zones culminating in gardens,
constituted elaborate stages for dynastic representation. Animated by court
rituals, each of them projected a distinctive royal image, invented with a specific
theory of dynastic legitimacy in mind.106
The Ottoman Topkapı palace constructed in the fifteenth century after
the conquest of Constantinople was fortified and placed high above the city
proper, signifying the supremacy of the Ottoman Sultan over his subjects
and over the previous rulers. The palace was built over a former Byzantine
palace for the same reason. Similarly, the Fatih Mosque was constructed
above the former burial ground of the Byzantine emperors.107
The sultan himself was shielded from the public view. He rarely
engaged in public displays. Diplomatic envoys to the court were received
within the palace, but kept short of the inner sanctum, the harem area.
The palace was a private space. The padishah witnessed proceedings and
deliberations from strategically placed windows, where screens provided
103
106
Hourani 1991, 27–28.
Necipoğlu 1993, 303.
104
107
Karamustafa 1992, 215. 105 Szuppe 1997, 317.
My thanks to Lerna Yanik for pointing this out.
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The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
him a view, but simultaneously prevented others from seeing him. The
emperor was thus unseen but metaphorically omnipresent.
The dominant and highest building of the complex was the tower of
justice, symbolizing the sultans as dispensers of justice whose law codes
(kanunname) were harmonized with Shari’a by the mid-sixteenth
century.108 A prevalent trope of legitimation thus depicted the Ottoman
ruler as the one who administered universal justice.109
The Safavid design was the diametric opposite of the Ottoman.
The palace and city in Isfahan were an integrated whole. Given that the
Safavids lacked a clear imperial center, as Istanbul was for the Ottomans,
or Agra and Delhi for the Mughals, Shah Abbas designed Isfahan to be
the capital and made it a showcase of Persian culture and Safavid
refinement.110 Unfortified, the palace invoked the imagery and heritage
of the steppe tribal leaders. Such leaders would hold court, and allow for
commoners to approach them with petitions. Here again the ruler’s standing hinged on his ability to administer justice. The palace was constructed
so as to suggest the presence of paradise on earth. Elaborate gardens with
views of bucolic fields invoked the emperor as the one who ordered the
world homologous to heaven. European images were incorporated as
well and integrated with Persian cultural motifs.111 Day-to-day practice
mirrored the openness of architectural design. The shah himself would
mingle freely with the public. Commoners would stop him during his
rides and petition him on the spot. This feature of Safavid rule hailed
from the warrior-band heritage of the Safavids’ steppe predecessors.112
Entertainment was common, and two French friars who visited the
court respectively in 1608 and 1609 were taken aback when they saw
how the shah and his consorts would drink wine and engage in other
activities that were uncommon at the austere Ottoman court. One friar
noted how “he will go through the public streets, eat from what they are
selling there and other things, speak at ease freely or sit down beside this
man and that.” Friar John Thaddeus provided a similar description of
Abbas I: “He will go to the place where Julfa Armenians are, to the house
of a private person and sit there two or three hours drinking with them,
finding out what he wants to know . . . He is also wont to go for a pastime
to other places hardly respectable.”113
108
109
110
112
113
Necipoğlu 1993, 305.
Barkey 2008, 100–101, 106. Hence the kadi who administered justice at the local level
became an important conduit manifesting the sultan’s power for all to see.
Hodgson 1974, vol. 3, 40; Matthee 2010, 237. 111 Kleiss 1993, 269, 271.
Matthee 2010, 247.
Necipoğlu 1993, 307. See also 310, 312 with accounts of wine being served at royal
receptions.
Lords of the Auspicious Conjunction
197
Beyond the royal palace, the Safavids also used their sponsorship of
religious sites to demonstrate their authority. Sufi motifs were over
time mixed and integrated with Shi’a symbolism. In so doing
“Safavid kingship could be characterized in such a way that the
shah was seen first as a royal monarch, second as a Shi’a proselytizer
and third, a Sufi pir.”114
The Mughal court occupied the intermediate between the private and
austere Ottoman rule and the public and relatively ostentatious Safavids.
The Mughal Red Fort, so named for its red walls, was fortified as was the
Ottoman. The palace buildings were laid out in geometric precise designs
thus distinguishing it from the narrow and winding streets of the city.
Precise geometric design inferred the reconciliation of opposites and the
creation of perfect order.
Many of the palace buildings were built from white marble, typically used
for shrines. As with the other empires, the role of the shah as the dispenser of
universal justice reappears. A golden chain could sound a bell to request an
intervention by the shah.115 More public than the Ottoman ruler, the
Mughal shah would participate in public displays from his jharokha, the
canopied balcony – an architectural style adopted from the Rajput Hindus.
In daily viewings the public could thus witness his presence, even if he did
not mingle with them as casually as his Safavid counterpart.
Throughout the palace, sculptures and paintings linked the Mughal
ruler to epic heroes. Other symbols invoked the Turco-Mongol, Sasanid,
Hindu, and Persian traditions. Some paintings depicted the Mughal
emperor with a halo, representing the ruler as “the light that shined
forth.”116 His activities followed a strict timetable, evoking the astronomical timetable of sun and planets.117 And as their Ottoman and Safavid
counterparts, Mughal rulers sponsored the building of mosques and
madrasas in proximity of royal mausoleums, thus braiding religious
motifs with the heritage of their dynasty.118
In short, architectural designs across the Islamic ecumene created a
shared cultural space that linked the temporal with the sacred.119 By
sponsoring such architecture, rulers could link their authority to the
sacred realm.
114
115
116
119
Rizvi 2002, 10. Also see Esmi and Saremi 2014.
The Mughal emperor in dispensing justice created the peaceful conditions through
which individuals might aspire to divine illumination. Alam 1997, 116; Necipoğlu
1993, 315.
Necipoğlu 1993, 313. 117 Necipoğlu 1993, 317. 118 Asher 2014 .
For a discussion of rulers as conduits between the sacred and the profane, see Eliade
1959.
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6.3.4
Heterogeneity and Inclusion
The particular organization of military service in the empires provided
one means of inclusion. Rising through the ranks and with the possibility
of manumission, non-Muslims could, after conversion, enter into the
elites of the empire. Conversion could be more a matter of public declaration rather than internal commitment to Islamic doctrine. Some converted Christians retained contacts with their Christian families and
friends, and in private possibly still worshiped as Christians.
Regardless of the diverse levels of commitment to religious orthodoxy
in the various empires, other modes of inclusion also emerged because all
rulers were confronted by heterogeneous populations. In the Ottoman
case, the conquest of Constantinople, the Balkans, and much of Hungary
added large Christian populations. All these were included in an already
multiethnic, multireligious empire that contained Jews, Armenians, and
multiple Muslim schools of thought and their followers. Voltaire’s perspective was remarkably prescient in his discussion of the need for toleration, which he witnessed in the Ottomans.
The grand seignior peaceably rules over subjects of twenty different religions;
upwards of two hundred thousand Greeks live unmolested within the walls of
Constantinople; the mufti himself nominates the Greek patriarch and presents
him to the emperor; and at the same time allows of the residence of a Latin
patriarch. The sultan appoints Latin bishops for some of the Greek isles.120
In the early years of Ottoman expansion into Europe, Ottoman elites
frequently intermarried with prominent Byzantine families. After the
conquest of Constantinople, Christians were readily incorporated into
the highest levels of administration. “Out of the fifteen grand viziers who
occupied their positions between 1453 and 1515, eight were of Byzantine
or Balkan nobility, four rose to the ranks from the devshirme system, and
only three were of Muslim Turkish origin.”121
Karen Barkey describes the Ottoman policy to deal with this diversity as
“separate, unequal, and protected.”122 Religious boundaries were recognized and maintained. Ottoman rulers decreed dress codes, marriage,
and other markers for distinguishing the non-Muslim groups from
Muslims, although the degree of enforcement is open to question. The
underlying idea revolved around maintaining religious and ethnic boundaries and giving them protected, dhimmi, status. Groups would be selfpolicing with their leaders acting as conduits between the Ottoman state
and the minority group membership.
120
122
Voltaire 2015, 102. 121 Data from Lowry, cited in Barkey 2008, 81.
Barkey 2008, 120–23, 132.
Lords of the Auspicious Conjunction
199
Tolerance and protection, however, did not mean equality. In law
courts, evidence from Muslims was privileged over that of unbelievers.
Tax rates for non-Muslims were also higher. Muslims paid the lowest
rate, dhimmis (Christians and Jews) resident in Muslim polities paid the
jizya at an intermediate rate. Foreigners, those from the Dar al-Harb paid
the highest rate as harbis.123 Demonstrative public behavior such as giving
way to Muslim pedestrians, and more importantly prohibitions against
worshiping in proximity of mosques, all served to reinforce the secondary
status of Christians and other non-Muslims.
The effect was to create material incentives to convert to Islam. At the
same time it also induced local elites to maintain these boundaries, since
they could exercise patronage and control over the group members, as
conduits with the center. The later millet system, which formally recognized the extrajudicial character of non-Muslims, only formalized much
earlier practices.124
But Jews, Greeks, and others were not only valued as conduits. Given
their important position in trading networks they could serve to foster
economic activity across the empire and between empires.125 As people of
the book they also enjoyed special status, given the Muslim recognition of
Abraham and Christ as prophets who had preceded Muhammad.
Christianity was an earlier revelation but had been superseded by the
later revelations to the Prophet.126 In addition, they could serve as
scribes, administrators, and convey knowledge of other regions outside
the empire. Many of the diplomatic representatives of the Ottomans thus
came from these groups.
Finally, we might conjecture that non-Muslim groups were attractive
since they lacked alternative power bases. Just as the Janissary and
Ghulam corps were strictly beholden to the sultan or shah, separated as
they were from their homelands, the non-Muslim official would have few
resources of his own.
As Benedict Anderson points out, the ability of indigenous peripheral
elites to gain vertical and horizontal access often provides a glue to hold
heterogeneous empires together.127 Vertical access gives peripheral elites
the possibility of rising in status and fortune. While the Ottomans did not
go so far as the Roman Empire, which gradually conveyed citizenship in
every increasing numbers, they did give peripheral elites a vested interest
in loyal service to the core.128 Recognizing, however, that horizontal
123
124
125
127
On the status of non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire, see, e.g., Goffman 2007, 3–68;
Lewis 1982, 172.
On the millet system and extrajudiciality, see Kayaoğlu 2010.
See Curtin 1984; and Tracy 1990. 126 Lewis 1982, 300.
Anderson 1991, 56–59. 128 On the Roman strategy, see Doyle 1986; Miles 1990.
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The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
movement by local elites across the empire would also create the possibility of collective action against the center, the Ottomans did not grant
elites a great deal of horizontal access. Career mobility there was, but
within vertically segregated communities.129
Of the three empires, the Mughal Empire was the most inclusive, particularly under the reign of Akbar (r. 1556–1605). With the conquests of
Babar, the first Mughal emperor (r. 1526–30), over the successors of the
Delhi Sultanate, the Timurid-Mughal rulers conquered another Muslim
polity, but one which contained a majority of non-Muslim subjects. The
problem compounded as the Mughal Empire expanded even further into
India, reaching its apex around the second half of the seventeenth century
under Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707). Thus, of the three empires, the Mughals
had to deal with the largest population. Its total population ranged probably between 80 million and 100 million, compared to 20 million to 30
million in the Ottoman Empire. Both dwarfed that of the Safavids who
numbered probably not more than 6 million to 10 million.130
In order to manage this population size and vast heterogeneity, the
Mughal rulers adopted a highly accommodative style. Hindus, nominally
converted, or sometimes not converted at all, were accepted with little
prejudice.
Like the Ottomans, their ruling elite was a composite one, made up of Indian
Hindus and Muslims, as well as Iranians and Central Asians. The substantial
presence of non-Muslims at the highest ranks of the ruling elite does, however, set
the Mughals apart from the Ottomans and even more so from the Habsburgs – in
whose empire one cannot imagine a non-Christian coming to occupy a place like
that afforded the Rajputs under the Mughal empire.131
This incorporation of Hindus into Mughal administration continued
beyond any specific ruler. Kayastha and Khatri caste members acted as
scribes (monshi) throughout the Mughal dynasty, and in so doing occupied positions in revenue collection, and record keeping.132 Persian
tended to be the usual bureaucratic language.
Religious and ethnic differences were tempered. Instead, the Sufi principle Sulh-I Kul, peace to all, was invoked under Akbar to suggest a
syncretist view which could accommodate both Hindu and Muslim.
Bigotry was a mark of error, whereas Sulh-I Kul embodied the notion of
Sufi universal reconciliation.133 Akbar himself took several Hindu wives.
129
130
131
132
133
Barkey 2008, 93; Barkey 1994, 26.
For a variety of estimates on population, see Habib 1982; Pardesi 2019, 282.
Subrahmanyam 2006, 82. See also Hodgson 1974, vol. 3, 59.
Alam 1997, 107. On one important monshi, Chandra Bhan Brahman, see Kinra 2015.
Subrahmanyam 2006, 85; Hodgson 1974, vol. 3, 76. Piscatori 1986, 60.
Lords of the Auspicious Conjunction
201
While intermarriage was not new, the fact that they were allowed to
practice their own religion and need not convert, marked a dramatic
change in practice.134
Far from being a closed, insular “world system,” the Mughals “lured
an extraordinary number of intellectuals from all over this cosmopolitan
ecumene to Delhi, Agra, Lahore, and other major cultural centres in
northern India.”135 Europeans were impressed by the degree of tolerance and accommodation that they lacked in Europe itself. Some even
had ambitions to stay at the Mughal court. The accounts of French and
English travelers and ambassadors unequivocally demonstrate how the
Europeans saw themselves in an unflattering mirror. Contrary to
Bernard Lewis’s argument that Islamic societies only belatedly gained
an interest in Western scholarship and science, the Mughal court and
nobles sponsored the study of theology, philosophy, the natural
sciences, and the translation of European works such as those of
Descartes and Gassendi.136
Many accounts of his contemporary chroniclers and subsequent scholarship have remarked on the syncretism of Akbar. His great grandson
Prince Dara Shukoh (1615–59) as well adopted his syncretist views. But
it would be wrong to view accommodation and inclusion as one or two
isolated cases of rule. Indeed, the Delhi Sultanate, and the various
Muslim dynasties that preceded the Mughals, similarly included diverse
religious communities in their administration. “The policy of their
absorption into the Muslim state power was not begun by the
Mughals. Since Toghloq time (fourteenth century) Hindus began to
figure in state service.”137 The idea that Hindu and Muslim cultures
were separate and distinct during the pre-Mughal period is arguably “a
clear example of a case of historical ‘back-projection’,” suggest Romila
Thapar. Many ideas, the divinity of the Sultan, the tolerance of Hindu
practices, and merging of architectural styles, indicate a merging of the
two cultures.138
Sunni and Shi’a theorists played an important role in this process.
One such Shi’a scholar, Nasir al-Din Tusi, articulated in his Akhlâq-e
Naseri (“disposition on morality,” published in Persian in 1235), how
the ideal ruler should seek harmony and coordination among conflicting
134
136
137
Ahmad 1961, 30; Alam 1997, 122. 135 Kinra 2013, 252.
Kinra 2013, 288. See also Ahmad 1961, 35. Lewis’s position is articulated throughout
his book Muslim Discovery of Europe (Lewis 1982). His later scholarship has been
severely criticized. See, e.g., Cole 2002. While mindful of Lewis’s critics, I have triangulated with multiple sources to offer supportive or alternative views, and have tended to
use his earlier rather than later writings.
Alam 1997, 107. See also Ahmad 1961, 34. 138 Thapar 1966, 319.
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The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
interests.139 This “mirror for princes” and other “Akhlaq” texts served
to edify and instruct, and featured prominently in the education of
Mughal rulers.140
From the Indian side, Hindu beliefs in multiple paths to religious truth
and the Sikh beliefs in spiritual unity all reinforced the possibilities of
mutual tolerance.141 Accommodation, in other words, had a long pedigree and many sources.
Moreover, the successors of Akbar, Jahangir (r. 1605–26), and somewhat to lesser extent also Jahan (r. 1628–58), maintained many of his
policies, even if they modulated them. The narrative that the Mughals
retreated from heterodoxy and tolerance after Akbar is a later interpretation, influenced by a narrative of Oriental despotism and decline. Jahangir
actively sought to ensure that followers of different religions could live in
peace.142
Moreover, if Akbar’s behavior might be viewed as decidedly unorthodox when compared to strict doctrinal interpretations of appropriate
behavior, his successors were not so different. Jahangir’s memoirs reveal
somewhat tellingly (and rather startlingly) of how he was wont to imbibe
alcoholic beverages.
I myself drink wine, and from the age of 18 yeares [sic] up till now, when I am 38,
have persisted in it. When I first took a liking to drinking I sometimes took as
much as twenty cups of double-distilled spirit; when by degrees it acquired a great
influence over me I endeavoured to lessen the quantity, and in the period of seven
years I have brought myself from fifteen cups to five or six.143
For the Mughals then the distinguishing boundaries were not so much
religious in nature but between the civilized and the uncivilized, signified
most acutely in the fine arts of poetry and literature of the Persians. Urdu,
written in the Persian alphabet served as the lingua franca.144 No matter
one’s ethnic origins or beliefs, a civilized person, one who had demonstrated his knowledge of customs, appropriate behavior, and learning,
could go far. These sentiments were not just held at the pinnacle of
139
140
141
143
144
Alam 1997, 111–12. Akhlaq refers to the disposition regarding morals and ethics.
Interestingly, Tusi had intended this for a Muslim ruler, but with the Mongol conquests,
he dedicated this to a Mongol ruler – suggesting that rulers of different faiths could play
such a role.
Kinra 2013, 261, 282. Azfar Moin argues that the Mughal syncretism did not just
emerge when they conquered India but that the Timurid and Safavid influences had
already instilled an appreciation of heterogeneity in the early Mughal rulers. Moin
2012, 19.
Hodgson 1974, vol. 3, 65, 69. 142 See also Kinra 2013, 259–60, 263, 266–70.
From the Memoirs of Jahangir, translated by Alexander Rogers, as cited by Barbour
1998, 357, fn. 29.
Hodgson 1974, vol. 3, 144–45.
Lords of the Auspicious Conjunction
203
Mughal power but permeated throughout the administration and
society.145 Sanjay Subrahmanyam submits that, “Eventually, acculturation into the Persian idiom also became a means for various non-Muslim
groups to accede to the Mughal hierarchy without converting to
Islam.”146
The Safavids faced a different environment than the Ottomans and
Mughals. The latter two had far larger populations of non-Muslims. The
Safavids, moreover, increasingly adhered to Shi’a Islamic doctrine,
although Sufi elements were prominent as well, particularly in the earlier
phases of Safavid rule. Given their relative homogeneity, and given their
position vis-à-vis the Sunni Mughals and Ottomans, one might expect
that they would adopt more rigid orthodox policies. And indeed, overall
one might regard their rule as less inclusive and less tolerant than those of
its neighboring empires, particularly when compared to the syncretic
Mughal rulers.
Nevertheless, here too a considerable degree of tolerance emerged.
Rudi Matthee notes “the remarkable capacity for inclusiveness exhibited
by the Safavids – a trait they shared with the Ottomans and the
Mughals.”147 Accommodation and inclusiveness probably reached the
high water mark under Shah Abbas (r. 1587–1629).148 The Sufi influence
on Persian thought inclined toward seeing religion in mystical terms
requiring introspection. Although Safavid rulers increasingly tended to
link themselves to Shi’a doctrine and the Ismaili version thereof, they did
not sever this link altogether, as we saw with regard to the use of architectural styles.
Moreover, with the expansion of the Safavid domains into the eastern
provinces of the Ottoman Empire and into the Caucasus region, they
gained sizable populations of Circassians, Georgians, and Armenians.
These provided a source for the central army to counterbalance the
Qizilbash but also were valuable administrators and conduits with the
local population. The lack of a feudal nobility enhanced the upward
mobility of these newcomers.
Nor did the conflicts with the Sunni Ottomans preclude access for
Sunnis to high office in the Safavid government. For all the attention
given to Abbas’s reign and policies even later administrations maintained
this openness. “From the sixteenth century until the last days of the
145
146
147
148
Kinra 2013, 268.
Subrahmanyam 2006, 83. On Persian poetic culture, also see Alam 1997, 117, 119.
Kinra underscores this sense of Persian culture as a mark of civility. Kinra 2013.
Matthee 2010, 250.
Savory concurs that Abbas’s reign was tolerant and inclusive but argues this was due to
material considerations rather than doctrinal conviction. Savory 2003, 443.
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The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
dynasty’s rule, the administration was periodically led by grand viziers of
Sunni conviction – men who were crypto-Sunni or even openly Sunni.”149
That said, we must keep in mind that even with inclusion and access,
the non-Muslim population in these empires was regarded as distinct and
inferior. Dress codes, marriage restrictions, constraints on religious
expression, all served to demarcate the non-Muslim population. Shi’a
and Sunni violence could be bloody with the various rulers persecuting
and killing rival sects and Muslims who did not share the dominant strand
of Islam in their domain.150 In the Safavid Empire, earlier tolerance was
gradually suppressed particularly with the ascendance of the cleric and
jurist Mohammad Baqer Majlesi (1627–99) who advocated conversion of
Sunnis. By the end of the Safavid Empire the earlier accommodation with
Sunnis had largely disappeared.
The degree of tolerance and inclusion also varied depending on geopolitical circumstances and the preferences of individual rulers. With the
Mughals, various challenges to Akbar’s syncretism emerged under his
successors. These intensified under Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707) who
favored a return to Islamic orthodoxy. Not coincidentally, at the very
moment that the Mughal Empire reached it largest extension under him,
the empire underwent a series of internal revolts that would gradually
undermine the dynasty.
A turn to rigidity and religious orthodoxy occurred throughout these
three empires. Various arguments suggest why this might have occurred.
One explanation submits they were confronted by the need to establish
more centralized administrations. Similar to the European state development, competition between the various polities, Muslim and non-Muslim
alike, required increasing mobilization of the populations. Thus, contrary
to the typical imperial style which ran “wide but not deep,” the Islamic
empires increasingly aimed to mobilize more resources by interfering with
local customs and prerogatives. The modernization in the modes of
warfare, most notably the advent of siege artillery by the early fifteenth
century and, later, firearms for the infantry and cavalry, intensified the
nature and costs of military conflict.151 Greater state centralization and
more rigid confessionalization went hand in hand, as they did in Europe at
the same time.
Moreover, orthodoxy emerged to some extent as a defensive move
against Western encroachment. The Ottomans had for centuries confronted the Christian polities in the West, but from the sixteenth century
149
150
151
Matthee 2010, 253.
Matthee notes the occasional violence against Sunnis and other religious sects as well as
violence during the Safavid conquests. Matthee 2010, 255–56.
Fodor 2016; Cipolla 1965.
Lords of the Auspicious Conjunction
205
on the Safavids and Mughals were challenged by European powers as
well. First came the Portuguese, but they were soon followed by the
Dutch and English. Rivalry with their neighboring Muslim empires also
led to more rigidity. The Ottomans thus became more insistent on maintaining religious orthodoxy as the Safavids challenged the Ottoman hold
on their eastern provinces.152
These observations might explain the view of Marshall Hodgson, that
the Ottomans were more rigid and exclusive than the Mughals.
Commenting on Selim the First’s rule (r. 1512–20), he notes, “The
Ottoman empire, then presented a rigidly communal Muslim front in
special contrast to the Indian empire with its Hindu generals and grantholders as well as vassals.”153
But if there was a reversal this should not be exaggerated. As noted
earlier, in the early decades after the conquest of Constantinople many
Byzantines and Balkans found a place in Ottoman administration. This
practice did not change much even in the ensuing period, although more
came from the devshirme rather than voluntary incorporation. “Between
the mid-fifteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries, only five grand viziers
out of forty-seven were of Turkish origin; the others were of Albanian,
Greek, or Slavic origin and had risen from the devshirme.”154
I have already suggested that Safavid inclusive practices also suffered
setbacks but were not altogether eviscerated. Quite the contrary. The
chronicle of the Frenchman Thevenet, who visited the Safavid Empire
during the reign of Abbas II in 1664, noted that the “Persians give full
liberty of conscience of whatsoever Religion they may be.”155 Similarly, a
French traveler to the Mughal Empire under Aurangzeb, an emperor
commonly regarded as rigidly orthodox and intolerant, remarked nevertheless how, “The Great Mogal, though a Mahometan, permits these
ancient and superstitious practices, not wishing or not daring to disturb
the Gentiles in the free exercise of their religion.”156
Finally, even Bernard Lewis, who has been criticized for his emphasis
on the dichotomy of the zones of peace and war, also recognized that in
tolerance and accommodation the Islamic empires surpassed those of the
152
153
154
155
156
Barkey 2008, 63, 70, 102–3.
Hodgson 1974, vol. 3, 107. He further observes that the Ottomans replaced Persian with
Turkic, signaling a further retreat from inclusiveness.
Barkey 2008, 124.
Savory 2003, 449. Ironically, Savory still suggests that the reversal of Abbas’s policies
was dramatic. This might be partially due to the fact that he relies heavily on the
accounts of the Carmelites.
As quoted in Alam 1997, 123. Azfar Moin argues that Aurangzeb sought to implement
greater Muslim orthodoxy by his promulgations but that in practice, little changed.
Moin 2012, 234.
206
The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
Christian states. “The Christian attitude towards Islam was far more
bigoted and intolerant than that of the Muslims to Christianity.”157
One might interject that even if these empires were inclusive they failed
to extend such policies to women. And indeed, women are conspicuous
by their absence from public office. In one of the very few cases, indeed
perhaps the only instance of a female sultan, the ascendance of Raziya alDin (Razziya Sultana) to the throne of the Delhi Sultanate in 1236 met
with a revolt of the nobility.158 No women occupied the highest offices in
the Ottoman, Safavid, or Mughal empires.
But here again nuance needs to be inserted in popular narratives. It is
important to recognize that the absence from public office did not necessarily indicate a lack of influence. As Leslie Peirce notes, the very fact that
Ottoman rule was patrimonial in nature, and obscured from the public
eye increased the influence of women behind the scenes. Contradicting
the popular view of the harem as an institution that isolated women in the
ruler’s household she demonstrates that women played an important role
in the governance of the empire. As powers behind the throne, women in
the harem directly influenced the protracted succession struggles, which
were all the more virulent given the lack of primogeniture. They were also
vital in the training and positioning of the heirs to the sultanate. “In a
polity such as that of the Ottomans, in which the empire was considered
the personal domain of the dynastic family . . . it was natural that important women within the dynastic household – in particular, the mother of
the reigning sultan – would assume legitimate roles of authority in the
public sphere.”159
The orthodox and exclusionist strains in these empires were thus not
omnipresent and were hardly immutable fixtures of Muslim rule.
Seventeenth-century scholars such as Locke and Voltaire and European
ambassadors remarked on the tolerance of these dynasties compared to
European Christian rulers. For all the contributions of the Enlightenment,
tolerance was neither a European invention nor a European monopoly.
6.3.5
The Permeability of Social and Political Boundaries
Despite the existence of multiple polities, the Islamic world constituted a
coherent social system; people interacted with each other and recognized a
157
158
159
Lewis 1982, 297. For a critique of Lewis’s views, see Piscatori 1986, 42.
Thapar 1966, 269, 301. While there is some discussion whether Shajar al-Dur, the wife
of the last Ayyubid sultan in Egypt, was also a sultan or a sultana, in the sense that the
title was sometimes given to wives of sultans as daughters, female rulers were obviously
very rare.
Peirce 1992, 44.
Lords of the Auspicious Conjunction
207
common identity. Collective beliefs that were revealed in religious doctrines and ceremonies, shared rituals, foundational myths, legitimating
traditions, and architectural designs, influenced how individuals saw their
place and the world around them.
Across this space, modes of legitimation were widely shared and recognized. The Turco-Mongolian heritage and most of all Islam influenced all
three of the major empires, and many of the other polities throughout the
Middle East and Central Asia. Far from static, these collective belief
systems developed continuously through adaptation, reinterpretation,
and institutional layering.160
Neither the Turco-Mongolian legacy nor the Islamic heritage created
rigid boundaries. From their Turco-Mongolian steppe heritage, the
Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal rulers inherited a sensibility for varied
and composite rule. The political organization of the steppe people was
confederate rather than hierarchical in any strict sense. Individuals identified with the tribe as the critical marker of differentiation from others.
Periodically, as when waging war, tribes would create larger entities on a
loose confederate basis with war leaders, khans, giving direction to the
affiliated tribes.161 The success of the war leader in turn conferred legitimacy. The lack of success demonstrated the converse, loosening the
obligation to follow the leader. A sense of autonomy thus remained with
each individual tribe.
As nomadic and seminomadic groups, the Turco-Mongolian peoples
and the rulers who claimed descent from those groups were thus deeply
embedded in frontier interactions, activities across boundaries. As we
already noted for the Ottoman frontier, in many cases conflict resembled
more the frontier skirmishing and raiding of their ancestors rather than
holy war.
Tribal affiliation continued to play a role throughout the existence of
these empires and indeed continues to do so to this very day. As a
consequence imperial rule had to be heterogeneous, flexible, and realize
the limits to central power.
These vast, pluralistic imperial states were obliged to accommodate within them
different religious and ethnic communities, professional organizations, and
groups bound by ties of region and descent . . . Imperial states such as the
Ottoman Empire and Safavid (and later Qajar) Iran were characterized by a
shifting balance of power between tribal and ethnic groups, on the one hand,
and bureaucratic and slave institutions, on the other.162
160
162
Mahoney and Thelen 2010. 161 Barfield 1989, 26–27.
Khoury and Kostiner 1990, 13.
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The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
In so doing, these empires by necessity, and by choice, institutionalized
ethnic and religious mobility. Those groups who were the most adept at
traversing the social boundaries were most often destined for success.
Since time immemorial trade and cultural interaction flowed across
frontiers and thus inevitably involved diverse ethnicities and religions.163
As a consequence, the “barbarian” Mongol administration in fact demonstrated remarkable organizational parallels with those of “civilized”
Christian Europe. Similarities in tax farming, general mercantile practices,
and fiscal organization demonstrate how such practices had spread
throughout the Eurasian ecumene including the Mongol territories.164
As noted in Chapter 4, the Mongols, for all the violence of their military
campaigns, were also remarkably tolerant of religious diversity. As the
Turco-Mongol newcomers converted, Islamic religious practices became
ever more important, but this did not lead to the rigid demarcation of
social boundaries, with some groups excluded from office or the ability to
practice their faith. Mongol tolerance might have carried over to the
Safavid rulers. Savory notes how a Safavid chronicler observed: “There
is neither slave nor free man, neither believer nor pagan, neither Christian
nor Jew, but the Mongols regard all men as belonging to one and the same
stock.”165
Arguably, Islamic doctrine itself creates the space for doctrinal flexibility. The Quranic injunctions lend themselves, as with any religious
doctrine, to multiple interpretations. It is well beyond the aims of this
book to discuss the infinite doctrinal disputes and multitude of legal
interpretations of the Shari’a (Sunni legal doctrine alone recognizes at
least four different schools), but several features stand out.166
On the one hand there is a call to spread Islam to the unbeliever,
including by violent means if required. Polytheists (those who commit
shirk, accepting other divinities besides God) and unbelievers are to be
despised, while the people of the Book, Zorastrians, Jews, and Christians,
can be tolerated amidst the Muslim population but as second-class subjects. But other interpretations argue that judgment regarding unbelievers
and non-Muslims should be rendered by Allah alone. Other aspects of
Islamic doctrine also permit one to postpone the creation of a universal
Islamic world.
Given this need to interpret Islamic law and morality (Shari’a does not
clearly distinguish these) jurists of all backgrounds acquired a high status.
“Whether Arab or non-Arab, rich or poor, white or black, scholars
163
165
166
See Curtin 1984; Sood 2008, 2011. 164 Barfield 1989, 204; Atwood 2004a, 368.
Savory 2003, 437.
On the various schools, see Hallaq 2010, 165; Piscatori 1986, 3–4. See also Stewart
2013.
209
Lords of the Auspicious Conjunction
emerged as distinguished leaders, men of integrity and rectitude by virtue
of their knowledge, and their knowledge alone. This epistemic authority
became a defining feature of Islamic law.”167
This flexibility in translating doctrine into practice extended to the
boundaries of the political order. Since rule was not demarcated in any
strict sense by territoriality, the distinction of who was considered
“inside” the community and who was considered “outside” fluctuated.
Just as Muslim rulers claimed authority over all believers, in their capacity
of defenders of the faith, they equally recognized the authority of other
rulers over their coreligionists in lands under Muslim control. Thus
Mamluks and Ottomans recognized legitimate claims by the Byzantine
emperor over important matters regarding the Greek Orthodox in their
lands.
Customarily, the patriarch of Constantinople would be elected by the
clergy and confirmed by the Byzantine emperor (basileus), although
the latter had no influence over church doctrine. The basileus represented
the political power of the state, the patriarch the religious power. In this
capacity the basileus would also sanction the patriarch of Jerusalem even
though it fell in Islamic territory. Conversely, the Mamluk rulers who
controlled Jerusalem recognized the Byzantine emperor’s right to confirm
the patriarch of Jerusalem, after which the patriarch of Jerusalem would
then also be confirmed by the Mamluk sultan.168 The patriarch was even
allowed to travel to Constantinople to confer in ecclesiastical counsels.
When the Ottoman emperor Mehmed II (the Conqueror) took
Constantinople, he herewith assumed the title and role of the basileus.
Thus, the odd situation arose that the patriarch of Jerusalem,
Athanasios, traveled to Istanbul in 1458 to seek assurances from
Mehmed, the Ottoman ruler, even though Jerusalem was held by the
Mamluk caliphs. He asked that the Greek orthodox community would
retain its rights and privileges. To that end he produced various documents from previous Muslim rulers that the community’s rights would
be guaranteed. Mehmed obliged.
Mehmed also appointed a new patriarch in Constantinople, Gennadius,
and made him the preeminent patriarch of the Orthodox Church, which
had not been the case under the Byzantines.169 In so doing he gained
greater centralized control over the Christians in his domain, but also a
source of revenue. In exchange for the Ottoman sanction, the patriarch
would pay the Ottomans sizable sums. In 1544, this apparently amounted
to 4,000 pieces of gold.170
167
170
Hallaq 2010, 155. 168 Hattox 2000, 113.
Barkey 2008, 133, 136.
169
Inalcik 1960, 413.
210
The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
It is important to note that these were not Muslim concessions to
European power, as some scholarship has viewed the millet system and
interpreted eighteenth- and nineteenth-century concessions. The
Mamluks were at the peak of their power when they recognized the
Byzantine emperor’s role in affirming the election of the patriarch of
Jerusalem. Similarly, Ottoman power was ascending, not declining. The
concessions were granted by expediency, recognizing that local autonomy
could gain Orthodox acquiescence, but also due to the fact that authority
was not conceived in the territorial terms as emerged in the postWestphalian era in Europe.
In addition, the boundaries that defined inclusion and exclusion were
not solely set by religious criteria but by a host of other markers of
differentiation. Matthee notes this was even true for the more orthodox
and hardline Shi’a Safavid rulers.
The Safavids had a rather clear sense of who belonged and who did not, who was
in and who was out. Inclusion and exclusion followed self-proclaimed civilizational and political rather than strictly religious categories.171
There were thus certainly boundaries to differentiate the “Other” from
those considered to be part of one’s own community, but these boundaries were fluid both within the domains controlled by Muslim rulers, but
also between the Muslim and non-Muslim polities. Orthodox Christians
thus sometimes preferred to live under Muslim rule rather than in Latin
Christian territories.
Legitimation of authority as territorially circumscribed rule and the
hardening of boundaries came largely under European influence. This is
not to say that these empires had no conception of territorial limits to
authority. However, their authority was not territorially defined.172
6.4
Conclusion
The Islamic ecumene, and particularly the Ottoman, Safavid, and
Mughal empires of the early modern period, constituted an international
society. Politics was understood by a shared culture in which similar
tropes, narratives, and religion informed the principles of conduct and
the legitimation of authority.
At the same time one can recognize that the Islamic world displayed a
bewildering variety of authority claims both vertically, within each empire,
171
172
Matthee 2010, 252.
It is thus a matter of debate whether the caliphate (khalifa) refers to the office of the
caliph with regard to the religious community, the umma, or whether it has territorial
connotations. Burgis 2009, 53. See also Gibb 1947, 409.
211
Lords of the Auspicious Conjunction
173
as well as horizontally, between the diverse Islamic polities. Islam played
a key role in creating a shared collective imagination, but it intertwined with
many other influences. All three empires retained elements of their TurcoMongolian heritage. Local conditions and varied doctrinal interpretations
refracted how these influences were to be understood and how they should
affect the organization of one’s own society and the relations with others.
Although religion played a critically important role in the cosmological
understanding of rulers and ruled, it would be wrong to argue that the
relevant demarcation of who was deemed to be a member of one’s community and who was not could be singularly reduced to those who lived in
the Dar al-Islam and the Dar al-Harb. Interaction with Muslims and nonMuslims occurred across frontiers. Warfare interspersed with intermarriage, trade, and cultural contacts.
The perspective that religion fully determined politics, such that the
West and Islamic polities (particularly the Ottomans) stood on continuous hostile footing, does not stand. Despite concepts as ghaza and jihad,
and despite the differentiation between the Dar al-Harb and Dar al-Islam,
compromise was possible. Armistices and truces were reached with
Christian polities. Although in principle treaties could not be permanent,
extension of armistices was permitted. Furthermore, equality among
sovereigns came to be recognized as well. Starting with the French king
other European sovereigns were increasingly recognized as equals over
the course of the seventeenth century.174
The Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires were also diverse in ethnicity, language, race, and religion. Social boundaries certainly existed
between Muslim and non-Muslim, but these boundaries, just as the
physical frontiers of the empires, were permeable. Christians, Jews,
Armenians, and others could rise to high rank in all these empires.
While ascendance in government and military ranks required conversion
in most cases (with the Mughals the least doctrinally insistent), those not
converting to Islam received benefits from protected status as dhimmis.
The Islamic rulers thus recognized the supremacy of Shari’a law, but
acted expediently in affairs of state.175
Rulers of these composite polities correspondingly used multiple
means of legitimating their authority. Their justifications were multivocal. They were at once world conquerors, heirs to Chinggis Kahn and
173
174
Some scholars argue that the empires, and even later the Middle East territorial states,
never fully displaced local loyalties. Bassam Tibi speaks of the simultaneous of the
unsimultaneous: tribes emerged much earlier than the modern state, yet they coexist
in today’s environment. Tibi 1990, 128, 145. He is far less convinced than Piscatori
1986 that the Middle East today can be reconciled with the state system.
Akhavi 2003, 552. I discuss this further in the next chapter. 175 Alam 1997, 109.
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The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
Timur, and lords of the auspicious conjunction-the Sahib Qiran who
would exercise universal justice. They were sultans and emperors of
Rum (Rome). They were defenders of the faith, holy warriors, and syncretistic shahs and sultans. They were orthodox, ascetic Muslims and
extravagant entertainers of their retinues in the tradition of their steppe
forefathers.
While recognizing such diversity, these polities were part of an international society with shared norms and shared principles. Collective
beliefs provided a lingua franca to communicate one’s objectives and
aspirations, a sense of what constituted the basis of justice, and source
of legitimate authority.
When the Western maritime empires started to make inroads into the
areas controlled by these Islamic empires they encountered sophisticated
administrations. Rather than rational bureaucratic administration replacing an antiquated patrimonial system, the Europeans adopted to and
layered on to the extant administrations.176 For example, after the British
began to displace Mughal rule they adopted the use of munshi, the
notaries, secretaries, and clerks who had formed the backbone of the
Mughal administration. Robert Travers notes how Mughal ideals and
routines continued to serve the British Empire. “This political culture was
tied together by Persian, the language of Mughal government, and by
norms of gentlemanly conduct that cut across internal religious and social
distinctions.”177
The fact that the empires ultimately succumbed to the Western colonial powers cannot be simply attributed to a disdain for anything
European, or to insularity and incompetence.178 Contrary to arguments
that suggest the Islamic empires tended to dismiss developments in the
sciences and arts following the Renaissance, we also know of the keen
interest of the Ottomans and Mughals in acquiring knowledge from
beyond the Islamic world.179
Nor is it the case that these Islamic empires simply succumbed to the
cultural imprinting that scholars have ascribed to Western dominance.
Western ideas, views, and concepts did not unidirectionally inform how
these societies were to view their future.180 As Rajiv Kinra demonstrates,
176
177
178
179
180
See Bellenoit 2012. He further notes how Persian refinement and community of learning straddled elite and middle-class cultures.
Travers 2007, 20.
For example, the limited of adoption of European military technology and logistics did
not follow from any reluctance on the part of the Mughal rulers but rather followed from
the cavalry nobility who feared for a loss of status and revenue, and reliance on public
display rather than military effectiveness. Gommans 1995; Gordon 1998, 243.
See Aksan and Goffman 2007.
See particularly Kinra 2013, 255; Barbour 1998.
Lords of the Auspicious Conjunction
213
Mughal values of tolerance and accommodation informed Western travelers and views. For example, Francois Bernier, who traveled to the Mughal
domains in the seventeenth century, reported his impressions of Mughal
society, which influenced French scholars who advocated religious tolerance and the equivalence of all religions. Those in turn found their way to
philosophical doctrines in Europe, only to be reexported to other parts of
the world as uniquely European products of enlightenment, reason, and
tolerance. Tolerance and civility were not the sole province of European
philosophers but had been well established in the Eurasian and Islamic
ecumene before the European enlightenment.181
No doubt none of these empires would fit the Weberian ideal type of a
rational bureaucratic state. However, one might keep in mind that the
Weberian model derives from the modern collective imagination of
European nation-states. Historiography too often obliterates the trials
involved in forging such homogenous units. Nation building requires,
as Ernst Renan remarked, collective remembrance but also collective
amnesia. Alternative social units that give cohesion, such as the extended
family and clan, are displaced by a more amorphous imagined national
identity and an often aspirational organic solidarity. Religious conflicts,
population resettlement, and ethnic cleansing are often part of the process. One scarcely needs to be reminded that the Armenian genocide
coincided not only with World War I but also with the emergence of a
Turkish national state rather than Ottoman identity.
These composite empires, by contrast, survived for centuries by embracing and managing the vast diversity within their realms. Their worst
transgressions against tolerance and flexibility arguably came when they
aspired to become the homogeneous, rational bureaucratic entities that
were emerging in Europe.
To conclude, I have illuminated a logic of order that was quite distinct
from that advanced by the West. A common view suggests that the collective imagination of these empires was incompatible with the Westphalian
state system. More specifically that claim submits that the Ottoman
Empire by the nineteenth century was unwilling and unable to adjust to
the system of sovereign territorial states. In the next chapter, I challenge
that view and contend that the Ottomans displayed considerable flexibility
in reaction to the increasing pressure from the West.
181
Kinra 2013, 289.
7
Collective Imagination and the Conduct
of Interpolity Relations
There has always been a strong instinctive aversion to the acceptance of
fixed boundaries, arising partly . . . from the dislike of precise arrangements that is typical of the Oriental mind . . . In Asiatic countries it would
be true to say that demarcation has never taken place except under
European pressure and by the intervention of European agents.
Lord Curzon, 1907
7.1
The Islamic Empires and the Westphalian System
The need to understand the historical roots of the Islamic world is
particularly pertinent given developments today. We continue to debate
whether the modern concept of the sovereign, territorial state can be
accommodated within Islam.1 Recent claims by radical groups as the
Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) highlight such apparent
tensions between the different logics of order.
Some aspects of Islamic political organization would at face value seem
to make it incompatible with the Westphalian system of sovereign, territorial states. In the Islamic understanding religious affiliation defines the
criterion of inclusion and exclusion to the political community, and
extends authority claims over that community. In Europe, by contrast,
although the principles of the Peace of Westphalia (1648) did not result in
fully established sovereign states until much later, the signatories reaffirmed the principle that religion would be based on the prerogative of the
sovereign in control of that territory. The norm cuius regio, eius religio –
whoever controlled the given territory would have the right to determine
the religion – had already been accepted by the Peace of Augsburg in
1555. The Peace of Westphalia articulated its extension: religious authority, including that of the Pope, would be territorially circumscribed from
then on.
The particular empires of our study also clashed with the territorial state
system in another respect. All three legitimated their rule by the ideology of
1
For an overview of some of these debates, see, e.g., Piscatori 1986.
214
Collective Imagination and the Conduct of Interpolity Relations
215
universal empire. As we saw, the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal rulers
made claims to be world conquerors, sometimes drawing (fictitious) genealogical connections to the world conquerors that were commonly recognized: Alexander the Great, Chinggis Khan, and Timur. The logic of
organization of these Islamic empires, how they defined the extension of
authority, and how they defined what constituted the “inside” and “outside” of the relevant community did not comport with the emerging
European state system. As Robert Walker notes, the sovereign, territorial
state created a spatially demarcated “inside,” which ideally comported with
peace and order, while a spatial “outside” constituted the realm of international anarchy.2
But the different logics of order clashed in another way as well. By
transforming themselves in territorially defined polities, the European states
gradually displaced traditional loyalties at the level of kin-groups and local
communities in favor of an imagined nation. Various methods were used,
forced religious conformity (and earlier the pursuit of heretics); discriminatory practices; public education and national military service.3 The development of such states, which could maximize the state’s resources through
conscription and taxes, put the heterogeneous, multiethnic, and multireligious Islamic empires at a disadvantage in interstate competition.
Add to that claims that the Islamic world was not receptive to Western
ideas. The Islamic societies, in this view, were uninterested in major
European intellectual developments in science, philosophy, and geography. Consequently, they were reluctant to embrace Western diplomatic
rules and principles of international relations.
These claims combine to provide a conventional narrative of how the
European states came to dominate the Islamic ecumene, and how the
European expansion imposed the state system on this region. Thus, only
European coercion forced a reluctant Ottoman Empire, the “sick man of
Europe,” to adjust to the European state model. “The Ottoman Empire
remained at the outset of the nineteenth century essentially a medieval
Islamic state in objectives, organization, and mentality.”4
2
3
4
Walker 2010, 6.
For the impact of public education and military service, see Weber 1976. The term
“imagined communities” to describe the emergence of national identity is developed in
Anderson 1991.
Naff 1984, 144. Naff acknowledges that the Ottoman Empire was gradually integrated
into the European system for over a century before its final admission to the Concert of
Europe in 1856, but he nevertheless sees external pressure from the West as the primary
causal variable. “The constant necessity of having to negotiate the Empire’s survival”
drove the change rather than internal changes in the Ottoman Empire. Naff 1984, 158.
The Ottoman rulers in such accounts become entirely reactive and passive recipients.
Bozeman makes the same argument. Bozeman 1960, 1984.
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The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
I contend that these claims are incorrect.5 The Islamic polities, and more
specifically by the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire, increasingly –
by choice and necessity – came to accept the principles of a system of
territorial sovereign states.
However, other factors conspired to construct a narrative that the
Ottoman Empire was uncivilized, and incompatible with the Western
system. The European colonial powers conveniently used Western
criteria of “civilization” and international law to expand their control
of territories in the Islamic world. Hence, as an uncivilized actor among
the Western powers, it was not entitled to protection by the Law of
Nations. The Ottoman Empire was only admitted to the “civilized”
countries that made up the Congress of Europe by the middle of the
nineteenth century, and not without opposition. Moreover, it retained
a secondary status without full sovereignty, evinced by the capitulations
granted to foreign powers that continued until their final abrogation by
the Republic of Turkey in 1923. Indeed, although the Ottomans had
demanded the abrogation of the capitulations and extraterritorial
agreements at the outset of World War I, even its allies, Austria and
Germany, rejected the Ottoman demands until 1917, three years into
the war.6
Moreover, another Western idea, the notion that the nation and state
should be congruous introduced a different logic of organization into
multiethnic empires. It was not that the Islamic empires were irreconcilable with Westphalian principles such as territorial authority or
mutually recognized sovereignty. Nor was it the case that they did not
adapt to Western norms and principles. The Dutch signed peace treaties
with the Safavids, as did the Ottomans with the Austrian and Russians,
centuries before their inclusion in the European system of “civilized”
states.
However, the idea that empires could be transformed into nations
proved to be a direct contradiction of what made these empires successful for many centuries. Nationalism, the idea of the nation-state,
not the principle of sovereign, territoriality, proved to be incompatible
with the Ottoman order just as it was with other multiethnic and
multireligious empires. In such polities, the ruling ethnic or religious
group tended to downplay its own identity in order to incorporate the
many diverse subjected communities. Modern, nationalist discourse,
5
6
And indeed, studying the Islamic world has forced me to revise some of my earlier views,
particularly with regard to the implications of universal empire. For an earlier statement
on universal empires, which I now qualify, see Spruyt 2001b.
Kayaoǧlu 2010, 104–5.
Collective Imagination and the Conduct of Interpolity Relations
217
by contrast, subverted the previous integrative aspects of multiethnic
empires by emphasizing the specific, more narrowly defined imagined
nation.7
I start by discussing the apparent tensions between the logics of
order in the Islamic empires and the Westphalian state system. The
subsequent section clarifies how these tensions could be resolved due
to doctrinal flexibility and practical adjustment – not all that dissimilar to the developments in Qing China. Since the Westphalian system is intricately linked to a specific concept of international legal
principles, I turn to an evaluation of Islamic legal doctrine – again
investigating the extent to which they are reconcilable. The following
section discusses how the Ottomans engaged in multiple reforms in
response to the intensification of European colonialism from the
middle of the eighteenth century on.
This chapter focuses on the Ottoman case, since by the nineteenth
century both the Safavid and Mughal empires had fallen to successor
polities or had been brought under increasing formal control by the
Western powers (I include Russia in the latter). The Ottoman Empire
thus provides a perfect case to examine adjustment at the peak of Western
imperial expansion and confrontation with the West. The Ottoman
Empire had expounded claims to universal empire, had ambitions to
defeat the Western infidel powers as the Ghazi warrior state, and had
refused to recognize other rulers as equals; and yet, it adjusted its position
on all those points.
Despite these adjustments, Western powers refused to fully integrate
the Ottoman Empire into the Western system. Instead, they created and
solidified a particular Western view of international society by continuing
to classify the Ottoman Empire as an abnormal state and as an oppositional Other. They thus continued long-standing cognitive frames, in
which, “Early modern Europeans organized their neighboring world by
attributing to the Ottoman realm all the features of an imaginary
Gegenwelt [an oppositional world].”8 This in turn legitimated in their
eyes the eventual dismemberment of the Ottoman territories. The
Western demand for normalization, aligned with their preferred order,
served the colonial objective.9
7
8
9
See also Subrahmanyam 2006, 82. The Safavid Empire had ended before the fervent
nationalist movements of the nineteenth century, and the last Mughal ruler was deposed
by the British in 1857. Counterfactually, neither empire would have been well suited to
accommodate nationalist sentiments.
Kolodziejczyk 2012, 175. See also Harbsmeier 1985. Harbsmeier suggests that cultures,
across time and space, typically create oppositional Others.
I borrow the concept of “normalization” from Foucault 2009.
218
The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
7.2
Collective Belief Systems and Interstate Relations
To what extent did the collective beliefs within the Islamic world influence the conduct of interstate relations? Specifically, how were relations
conducted between Muslim polities and Christian states? And how were
relations conducted between Muslim polities?
Conventional international relations theory has tended to err on the
side of two extremes. One view holds that material balances of power
generate generalizable patterns irrespective of the type of polities
involved, and irrespective of the collective identity embodied by the rulers
and populations of those polities.10 If nothing else, the discussion in the
preceding chapters should have dispelled the notion that historical identity, religious doctrine, and cultural paradigms are irrelevant.
At the same time one cannot say that religion was all determinative of
attitudes and policies in the Islamic world. The rough distinction of a Dar
al-Islam and a Dar al-Harb, locked in a permanent antagonism of fundamentally opposite religious doctrines, is a matter of perception and interpretation rather than a material fact. Doctrine and behavior intersected at
times and diverged at other junctures. Authoritative texts, indeed the
Qur’an itself, were open to multiple interpretations, and material incentives and constraints operated in the Islamic world as in any other political
setting.
More nuanced and relevant is an examination of the modalities of
relations between the Islamic empires and the West, and the relations
among the Islamic empires themselves. In this regard, one must ask
whether the logic of order of the Islamic empires, indeed, Islamic doctrine
itself, was compatible with the Westphalian system.
7.2.1
The Apparent Contradicting Logics of Order
As we have seen, the system of sovereign, territorial states that emerged in
the decades after Westphalia and that gradually became the constitutive
mode of structuring the global international system consists of several key
elements. First, the system entails the equality of polities.11 Although
naturally states are de facto unequal, de jure all states are equal and
sovereign in domestic matters. Second, international obligations only
follow from those agreements that states have voluntarily assumed.
Once agreed, states are bound to international agreements, “pacta sunt
10
11
Although Structural Realism has been criticized by a large body of literature, it has not
forestalled the argument that the Islamic polities were largely driven by realpolitik considerations. See Çelik 2011.
Spruyt 1994.
Collective Imagination and the Conduct of Interpolity Relations
219
12
servanda” (treaties are to be honored). Third, the mutual recognition of
sovereignty means that the ruler (and later the government more broadly)
is sovereign within his or her territorial domain. Borders constitute
mutually agreed spatial limits to authority. The sovereign has no legitimate claims to authority beyond those borders, and conversely no external rulers have any legitimate claims to authority within his or her domain.
Territorial criteria determine the inclusion in or exclusion from any given
polity.
Islamic doctrine as well as the practice of the Ottoman, Safavid, and
Mughal rulers would seem to challenge these precepts. For one, the
modes by means of which the Islamic emperors legitimated their authority would seem to preclude the recognition of others as equals. For
centuries they assumed the superiority of Islam as predestined to incorporate all others. That belief, together with a Turco-Mongolian claim to
rule as world conquerors, in the traditions of Alexander, Chinggis Khan,
and Timur, contradicted the idea of equality.
And indeed for centuries, Ottoman chroniclers would speak of the
barbarian and uncivilized Franks (referring to Christians from the West
in general). Even when referring to royals with whom the Ottoman
emperor would be on good terms, the stylistic narrative required negative
allusions.13 Consequently, the Ottoman rulers regarded themselves as the
successors to the emperors of Rum (Rome) and Byzantium, but only
recognized their Habsburg counterpart as King of Vienna.14
A second key point of difference between Islamic interstate relations
and the emerging European state system revolved around the status of
agreements. According to classical Islamic doctrine, any agreement to
cease hostilities should be conceived as a cease fire, not a peace treaty.
Such an agreement was not to last more than ten years.15 Thus, due to
expediency, an Islamic ruler might agree to temporarily suspend conflict,
but any durable agreement with non-Muslims was contrary to Islam.
Finally, the modes of legitimation that the Islamic rulers employed
would seem to contravene any notion that authority could be territorially
demarcated. Islamic rule pertained to the community of the faithful
wherever they might reside. Those beyond the immediate control of
12
13
15
Some scholars wonder whether the concept carries the same meaning in Islamic doctrine
as it does in international public law. Others suggest the concept does carry the same
meaning and, indeed, that it might have even introduced the concept to international law.
Burgis 2009, 43, fn. 17.
Lewis 1982, 174. 14 Çelik 2011, 14.
The duration of an agreement followed the Truce of Hudaybiya (628), in which the tribes
of Mecca agreed to cease hostilities with Muhammad and his followers from Medina.
See, e.g., Çelik 2011, 12.
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The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
Islamic rule would in time be brought into the community – a community
based on religious criteria.
Various scholars thus conclude that classical Islamic doctrine cannot be
reconciled with Westphalian territorial sovereignty and modern international law. Hurewitz argues that not only did the Islamic logic of organization conflict with that of the Westphalian system but that the Islamic
empires, specifically the Ottoman, were not inclined to seek stable and
peaceful external relations. “As a universal religion which remained theoretically at war with the infidel world, classical Islam did not frame more
than the most elementary principles to guide Muslim governments in
dealings with non-Muslim lands.”16
Hurewitz suggests the Ottomans acted on the basis of unilateralism.
Until the Peace of Carlowitz (1699) such unilateralism was based on a
position of strength. After that, but until the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth century, they still acted unilaterally but from a position of
weakness. Likewise, Rifaat Abou-el-Haj notes that until Carlowitz, the
Ottomans only agreed to a temporary cessation of hostilities and rarely for
more than eight years. From these perspectives, incompatibility and
mutual hostility would seem inevitable.17
The lack of interest in establishing permanent embassies in Christian
countries constitutes additional evidence of such unilateralism. By contrast, the Christian states had started to dispatch permanent ambassadors
to Istanbul from the mid-sixteenth century onward, following the French
embassy of 1535. Unilateralism only came to an end when the Ottomans
established permanent embassies in the West by the 1830s, and only due
to external pressures.
Similarly, Bernard Lewis suggests that until the Treaty of Carlowitz,
the Ottomans had been leading a millennial struggle against the
Christians. The Ottomans adhered to the view that, “the basic division
of mankind is into the House of Islam (Dar al-Islam) and the House of
War (Dar al-Harb) . . . Just as there is only one God in heaven, so there can
be only one sovereign and one law on earth.”18
7.2.2
Doctrinal Flexibility and Practical Adjustment
But pragmatism and doctrinal flexibility at times contravened orthodox
views. In time, the equality of sovereigns, long-standing treaties with nonMuslim polities, and territorial borders all became accepted principles in
the Islamic empires, in this case, specifically the Ottoman Empire.
16
18
Hurewitz 1961, 146. 17 Abou-el Haj 1969, 467–75.
Lewis 1982, 60–61. See also 42.
Collective Imagination and the Conduct of Interpolity Relations
221
To say there is an Islamic legal doctrine suggests homogeneity, whereas
in fact great heterogeneity has prevailed, as discussed in the previous
chapter. Islamic law, Shari’a, finds its origins in several foundational
sources: the Qur’an, the Hadith, and the Sunna, the actions and teachings
of the prophet. But while there is agreement on the key founding sources,
centuries of legal interpretations were required to develop Shari’a into a
full legal system. Secondary sources were critical in this regard. Various
modes of interpretation were used and multiple schools developed with
their own authoritative texts.19
To start, Islamic doctrine itself was not always clear on how to classify
the non-Muslim world. Islamic scholars and jurists would distinguish the
Dar al-Islam (the abode or land of Islam) and the Dar al-Harb (the abode
of war). But opinions differed as to whether a third area might be distinguished, the Dar al-Sulh or Dar al-Ahd.
Dar al-Islam constituted that area where the principles of Islam were in
force. This could be true even if the state contained a minority of
Muslims. Dar al-Harb consisted of that area where Muslims suffered or
were insecure, and where the preaching of Islam was forbidden. This
could even be true if Muslims constituted a majority. A more general
understanding argued that the Dar al-Harb consisted of any territory that
was not under Islamic rule.
The zone of Dar al-Sulh consisted of countries that had entered into an
agreement with Muslims and with which the Dar al-Islam maintained
nonhostile relations. The lands of Dar al-Sulh were thus ruled by unbelievers, but Muslims were not in danger. In some understandings the Dar alSulh would also pay a yearly tax (haraj or jizya), thus submitting to the
superiority of the Islamic powers.20
Different legal doctrines interpreted the relations with the Dar al-Sulh
in various ways. The Shafi School argued that a Dar al-Sulh could be
recognized even in the absence of a formal agreement between the Islamic
power and the non-Islamic polity. The Hanafi School, by contrast,
argued that an agreement was required. If no agreement existed the
non-Islamic entity would be considered as part of the Dar al-Harb.21
Mohammed Abo-Kazleh suggests that the differences between the Shafi
interpretation and the Hanafi view lead to a dramatically different understanding of the general nature of international relations. The Qur’an itself is
unclear on whether peace or conflict constitutes the natural order. The
Quranic injunctions from the early period of Muhammad’s life, when his
19
20
21
Burgis 2009, 50.
Parvin and Sommer 1980, 3–4; Çelik 2011, 12–13; Burgis 2009, 52, 56.
Parvin and Somer 1980, 4.
222
The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
position was relatively weak vis-à-vis his opponents in Mecca, suggest that
accommodation and peace should be the norm. Later verses, associated
with Muhammad’s period in Medina, however, call for greater belligerence
and forceful conversion of unbelievers.22 The Hanafi theorists argue that
the later injunctions abrogate the earlier, and thus they advocate forceful
striving (jihad) by violence if necessary. The Shafi scholars, by contrast,
note that neither the Qur’an nor the Sunna mention the existence of the
Dar al-Islam and the Dar al-Harb. Both terms are considered to be interpretations by subsequent scholarship. Thus, in their interpretation, peaceful relations should be the norm. Force is permissible for self-defense but
laws of war pertain.23
More variation comes from the modalities by means of which the Dar
al-Islam should be configured. At times the Dar al-Islam should expand
by jihad (whether by force or conversion). At other times it might contract, as suggested by the Hijra, Muhammad’s relocation from Mecca.
Pragmatic retreat in the face of a superior enemy was not foreclosed.
Agreements with non-Islamic powers, the Dar al-Sulh, could also lead to
a set of static relationships, rather than perennial conflict. In this case, the
Dar al-Islam would neither contract nor expand.
While agreements were not formally intended to last beyond ten years,
here, too, degrees of flexibility emerged. Agreements could be renewed
beyond the original ten-year span. Indeed, already by the eleventh century when the expansion of the Islamic territories had largely stalled,
truces were frequently renewed.24
The agreement in 1536 between the Ottoman emperor Süleyman I the
Magnificent (r. 1520–66) and the French king Francis I (r. 1515–47) arguably marked a turning point from earlier practices to gradual and increasing
accommodation with the Western state system. Even before the agreement,
perceptions had started to change both in France and the Ottoman Empire.
Positive views of the Franks emerged in the wake of Prince Cem’s flight to the
west. Cem, brother of Sultan Bayezid II (r. 1481–1512), had contested the
throne but after defeat had fled to Savoy, then France, and then Italy. In
diplomatic exchanges to deal with this issue, the Sultan already by 1483
referred to the French king as “a great Sultan. We are peers.”25
22
23
24
25
Abo-Kazleh 2006, 44. On various modes of jihad, also see Aboul-Enein and Zuhur 2004,
4–5.
Abo-Kazleh 2006, 48. The literature on Muslim laws of war is voluminous. For a short
list, see Burgis 2009, 44, fn. 20.
Parvin and Somer 1980, 13. Note that Bouzenita argues that the Hanafi School was
particularly important due to the Abbasid Caliphate’s adherence to this school.
Bouzenita 2007, 25.
Vatin 2015, 7. Such positive views were not just meant for French ears. In negotiations
with the Austrian Habsburgs in 1533, the grand vizier Ibrahim Pasha described the
Collective Imagination and the Conduct of Interpolity Relations
223
The agreement of 1536 settled several issues. In the accord, Süleyman
acknowledged Francis I as an equal, although the multiplicity of titles
obscures whether full equality was indeed intended.26 Moreover, the
agreement was to last for the duration of the rulers’ lives, thus beyond
the ten-year maximum that previous doctrinal views had stipulated.
Finally, the agreement was intended to signal a broader acceptance of
principles that originated in the West. Thus, in addition to Francis I and
Süleyman, the convention included a provision that other monarchs such
as the Pope, the Kings of England and Scotland could join as well. (The
English did not join but Elizabeth would sign a separate treaty with the
Ottoman Empire in 1580.) Shortly thereafter, by 1542, France established a permanent embassy in Istanbul and they subsequently conducted
joint naval operations in 1542–43.27
Admittedly, there is disagreement about the nature of the FrenchOttoman accord. Lewis denies that the agreement conveyed equality
and notes how a Turkish chronicler described the king of France as a
bey (similar in rank to an Ottoman provincial governor). He further notes
that although the Turks saw these as friendly relations, they nevertheless
thought that “the idea of an alliance with Christian powers, even against
other Christian powers, was strange and, to some, abhorrent.” Moreover,
“Such a truce, according to jurists, could only be provisional. It should
not exceed ten years, and could, at any time, be repudiated unilaterally by
the Muslims . . .” after giving notice.28 The logic of universal empire and
Islamic doctrine were in Lewis’s view fundamentally incompatible and
remained so for many centuries. “At no time before the nineteenth
century was any sovereignty defined in territorial terms . . . nor was the
ethnic, linguistic, or territorial nation seen as a natural basis of
statehood.”29 Thomas Naff likewise notes the “conceptual differences
between the Ottomans and Europeans.” He views the alliances and the
granting of capitulations as unilateral concessions from the Sultan, and
makes virtually no mention of the new principles of equality and the
duration of the agreements.30
26
27
30
French in flattering terms. Vatin 2015, 8. Whether the exchange of titles meant the
gradual recognition of real equality is a matter of debate. Both Christian and Ottoman
rulers manipulated titles for their respective audiences. See Kolodziejczyk 2012, 188.
Çelik 2011, 21; Piscatori 1986, 50. Khadduri’s views are discussed below in more detail.
Also see Akhavi 2003, 552. For the text of the treaty, see “Traité de paix, d’amitié, et de
commerce,” Testa 1864, 26–41. Note that the archives record the treaty date as February
1535, but subsequent research suggests it was actually February of the following year.
Vatin 2015, 8–9. 28 Lewis 1982, 45, 61. 29 Lewis 1982, 60.
See Naff 1984, 146–48. Instead, he notes that throughout the seventeenth and most of
the eighteenth centuries, the Ottoman “leaders remained as closed-minded to economic
reform as they were to political and military innovation.” Naff 1984, 148.
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The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
How might one possibly reconcile these apparently divergent views of
these agreements? First, Lewis himself acknowledges a transformation
over time in Ottoman diplomacy. He notes that some jurists in time
recognized a third category, the Dar al-Ahd, and that truces could also
be renewed indefinitely. Moreover, by the eighteenth century, peace with
Christian states was considered legal and desirable.31 The Ottoman order
was not perceived as per se irreconcilable with that of the European
powers. Some of the different perceptions regarding Muslim views on
diplomacy might thus be attributed to varied interpretations as to when
their diplomatic practices changed, rather than having to do with a disagreement as to whether they changed.32
Moreover, the apparent disregard for Christian rulers conveyed by
some narratives need not necessarily indicate that the Ottoman rulers
saw no means of stable relations in practice. Chroniclers and jurists of the
time were hardly objective observers and at times they wished to convey
their disapproval of the accord (by deeming them illegitimate), or, conversely, they had reasons to extol the virtues of the ruler in question (by
belittling the other ruler as unequal to the exulted padishah).33
No doubt the shift in Ottoman policies had something to do with
various practical considerations.34 The Ottomans were interested in having some European powers as possible allies in their conflict with the
Habsburgs. Pressure from the nascent Safavid Empire was also a source
for concern. Whatever the motivations, however, it did signal a change in
Ottoman policy.
One must also be cautious to attribute these changes simply to weakness. Indeed, almost a century and a half after the French-Ottoman
accord, the Ottomans would still threaten Vienna itself. Even when the
siege ended in 1683, the combined Christian forces expected a counter
offensive given their respect for the immense resources of the Ottoman
Empire.35
Closer historical inspection also reveals that in practice Muslim polities
regularly signed agreements with non-Muslim states. Ambassadors were
exchanged with non-Muslim states as early as 800.36 Already by 1387 the
nascent Ottoman house had allied with the Genovese against the
31
32
33
34
Lewis 1982, 62; Naff 1984, 166
Parvin and Somer argue that boundaries between the Dar al-Islam and the Dar al-Sulh
were never formalized but that by the sixteenth century, principles of territorial segregation and territorial law nevertheless had started to take hold. Parvin and Somer 1980,
5, 14.
From the other side, the Europeans were not exactly forthcoming with exulted titles for
the Ottoman rulers. English chroniclers and ambassadors, for example, would simply
refer to the sultan as the “Grand Seigneur.” Barbour 1998, 347.
Piscatori 1986, 50. 35 Broucek 1987. 36 Piscatori 1986, 49.
Collective Imagination and the Conduct of Interpolity Relations
225
37
Venetians with an exchange of embassies and gifts. They also regularly
signed agreements beyond the ten years that many Muslim jurists
prescribed.
Conversely, the behavior of Christian states toward the Ottomans
suggests that whatever degree of unilateralism and hostility prevailed on
the side of Muslim polities, the Christian polities were at least their equal
in this regard. To start with the French-Ottoman agreement: Less than a
decade after the accord Francis I decided to send a joint diplomatic
mission with the Habsburgs to the Ottomans. Francis had a vested interest in seeking to acquire the Duchy of Milan for his third son Charles in a
marriage arrangement. Milan, however, was under the control of the
Habsburgs, and Francis therefore sought a rapprochement with Charles
V, even though the latter had been the acknowledged common enemy
targeted by the French-Ottoman accord. While it is true that the
Ottomans in turn were seeking an agreement with the Habsburgs to
regulate their holdings in the Balkans and Hungary, they viewed the
French-Habsburg mission as a betrayal by the French. If the adherence
of the Ottomans to treaties is drawn into question, we must equally
wonder how they perceived the machinations of the French. The
French interest in a rapprochement with the Habsburgs evaporated the
moment Prince Charles died, making the joint Habsburg-French mission
an immediate failure, raising further doubts about the credible commitment of the French.38
Nor were the Christian states committed to treating the Ottomans as
equals.39 In the historical narratives of the time, Emperor Charles V
depicted the French agreement as disloyalty to the Christian commonwealth. European kings betrayed their faith and fellow Christian states in
seeking accords with Muslim polities.40
Franklin Baumer suggests that European states continued to share a
Christian identity even after the Reformation and continued to demonize
the Ottomans. Throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries,
European rulers invoked the trope of Christian Europe locked in mortal
combat with the infidel. Scarcely four years before his agreement with the
37
39
40
Çelik 2011, 17. 38 Severi 2001, 216, 228.
Christian jurists were reluctant to recognize treaties with the Ottomans. Çelik 2011, 21.
For many centuries, the Ottomans had granted extraterritorial concessions to Christian
merchants through imperial decrees (ahidname). Conversely, however, Christian governments were reluctant to allow for the settlement of Muslim communities in their states.
Goffman 2007, 73.
Christine Isom-Verhaaren suggests that the French–Ottoman alliance was not as negatively viewed as conventionally argued. Approbation to the alliance she attributes to
Habsburg propaganda at that time and the later nineteenth-century view of the
Ottomans as the sick man of Europe. Isom-Verhaaren 2007, 395–425.
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The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
Ottomans, Francis I had himself declared in the Treaty of Calais that he
and the English King Henry VIII should combine “for the defense and
conservation of our Christian religion and in order to resist the efforts and
damnable enterprises of the damnable Turk.”41 When he did sign an
alliance with the Ottomans he kept the negotiations out of the limelight to
avoid condemnation. And as the chroniclers avowed, when he did sign
agreements with the Sublime Porte, it was “Presque toujours avec repugnance, et comme force par la necessité.”42 While the calls for joint action
often came to naught, the possibility of such an appeal still resonated.
Much has been made of the Ottoman lack of permanent embassies to
the European capitals, since the exchange of missions at the ambassadorial level entailed mutual recognition of statehood. Although clearly the
Ottomans had sent emissaries on a nonpermanent basis for centuries, the
first effort to establish permanent embassies in the West only came after
1793, and was then suspended, resuming several decades later.43 Less
attention has gone to the fact that Ottoman missions to Europe were not
always welcomed by Christian rulers, as Lewis admits.44 Moreover, the
lack of ambassadorial reciprocity was not unique to the Ottomans. The
Papacy received but traditionally did not send ambassadors. Many Italian
city-states sent ambassadors to the major European states, but most did
not receive ambassadors in return.45
The lack of formal embassies did not mean that the Ottomans were
bereft of contacts with the West. Many permanent or semipermanent
missions populated Istanbul. Consequently, the Ottoman rulers could
avail themselves of an extensive network of contacts throughout the
Mediterranean world. In such an environment, having formal embassies
might have seemed superfluous.46 Indeed, Daniel Goffman suggests
that the alleged reluctance of the Ottomans to engage in diplomatic
exchanges has it the wrong way around. Most accounts allege that
modern diplomacy emerged in fifteenth-century Italy. However, “the
formulating of some of the most essential elements of the modern
world’s diplomatic system – permanent missions, extraterritoriality,
reciprocity, and the gathering of intelligence – drew upon the experiences of the directors of Florentine, Genoese, and Venetian settlements
in the Ottoman domain.”47
Further complicating matters, both sides arguably had divergent views
of what embassy entailed. While the Muslim powers had sent emissaries
abroad for centuries, the concept of permanent ambassadors (“liege
41
42
43
47
As quoted in Baumer 1944, 28–29.
From “Négociations de la France dans le Levant,” as cited in Baumer 1944, 38.
Çelik 2011, 25. 44 Lewis 1982, 111. 45 Çelik 2011, 8. 46 Findley 1972, 396.
Goffman 2007, 70.
Collective Imagination and the Conduct of Interpolity Relations
227
ambassadors”) might be construed as the exchange of hostages – at least,
this worried the English representatives. This would comport with practices where alliances were sealed by the intermarriage of dynastic families,
or the exchange of hostages to affirm commitment, but for obvious
reasons, this did confer anxiety given the emerging concept of diplomatic
immunity.48
Nor did European representatives to the Islamic empires cover themselves in glory. An illustrative example is provided by the English representatives to the Mughal court at the turn of the late sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries. They misrepresented their status, were ill prepared
for their task, and were poorly equipped for the pomp and circumstance
expected in diplomatic protocols. They came with royal letters signifying
their ambassadorial status and arrived with the king’s gifts. Embarrassingly,
they then had to admit that the gifts were not from the king (James refused
to pay for these) but from the East India Company. This raised doubts
about the importance of the English court, and their level of interest in
cordial relations, as well as simultaneously discredited the representatives’
standing.49
While the Mughal rulers proved to be masters in the theater of state,
the English failed to be more than bit players. Often acknowledging the
English ambassadors in style, the English were vastly overmatched by
the Mughal hosts. When the shah received them in great state and
bestowed honors, the English were not in a position to reciprocate or
sometimes even understand the honors bestowed upon them. Although
the Company understood that ceremony and display were powerful
political instruments, they lacked the means to deliver. Their goods
were often inferior and had sometimes spoiled or rotted in the voyages
across. The Mughal Shah Jahangir was puzzled by all this as he
remarked to Sir Thomas Roe, ambassador to his court from 1615 to
1618 (the same Roe who would later extol the virtues of Mughal tolerance and commercial endeavors). Roe himself knew the English had
failed to make an impression.
Soe that they laugh at us for such as wee bring. And doubtlesse they understand
them as well as wee . . . Soe that for my welcome, if it depend on presents . . . I have
smale encouragment, and shalbe ashamed to present in the Kyngs name (being
really his embassador) things soe meane, yea, woorse then former messengers
48
49
Barbour 1998, 353.
King James’s lack of interest might have been due to his general unease and disinterest in
interacting with Muslim rulers. As one merchant remarked in his letter to Sir Thomas
Parry, the king refused to sign commercial letters to the Turk “saying, that for Merchants
causes he would not do things unfitting a Christian Prince.” Wilson to Sir Thomas Parry,
1603, as quoted by Baumer 1944, 36, fn. 57.
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The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
have had; the Mogull doubtlesse making judgment of what His Majestie is by what
he sends.50
If the marks of differentiation hinged on the level of one’s acculturation
and refinement, and not just religion, as I have argued above, Western
ambassadors had much to learn.51 They failed to understand the elementary rules of gift exchange.52
Nevertheless, the Islamic empires would increasingly sign agreements
with their Western counterparts to settle their conflicts. For example, in
1455, the Hungarian king George Brankovic came to terms with
Mehmed the II, and agreed to pay tribute to the Ottoman sultan. For a
sum between 40,000 and 75,000 Venetian gold ducats he could retain
some of the contested territories and forts.53 In so doing the Hungarians
had also recognized the sultan as his superior.
In 1547, the Ottomans even came to an agreement with the Habsburgs.
Various factors facilitated their coming to terms. Charles V had been
successful in his campaigns against the German Protestants, Francis I
had passed away – raising uncertainty about the Franco-Ottoman alliance; and the Ottomans remained embroiled in conflict with the Safavids.
The terms of the agreement are noteworthy. The Habsburg ruler was not
yet viewed as an equal but akin to a vassal. Indeed, to retain parts of
Hungary, the Habsburgs would pay a fixed tribute of 30,000 gold ducats
each year, and would continue to do so until 1591. They agreed to
maintain the territorial status quo, and the sultan even wished for a
more precise delineation of boundaries. The Ottomans were thus not
averse to territorial delimitation of control. However, they did not conceive of this as a permanent arrangement. The agreement was meant as a
temporary armistice with the terms set for five years. Similarly to the
French, the Habsburgs would also station an ambassador in Istanbul.54
When the Austrian Habsburgs halted the tribute, the Long War ensued,
50
51
52
53
54
From Foster, The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to the Court of the Great Moghul, as cited in
Barbour 1998, 362; see also 355, 361. On Roe’s speech to Parliament in 1641, see Kinra
2013, 257. As ambassador to the Ottoman Court (1621–28), Roe also advocated an
alliance between England and the Prince of Transylvania in support of the Protestant
cause. Although this would have been in England’s interest, James refused given that the
prince used Turkish soldiers, providing more evidence of his disregard for Muslims.
Baumer 1944, 38–40.
Gradually, however, full relations were established between the Mughal court and
England (represented often by the East India Company). “At the beginning of the
eighteenth century . . . its envoys were given the same treatment as that accorded to
Royal ambassadors.” Alexandrowicz 1967, 199.
On the logic of gift exchange, see Emerson 1976.
Inalcik 1960, 408–27. (I divided 3 million akč a, the sum of the tribute, by 40, given the
conversion rate of 36 in 1436, and 45 by 1477.)
Severi 2001, 232–33, 242–43.
Collective Imagination and the Conduct of Interpolity Relations
229
which would end with the Peace of Zsitvatorok in 1606. Only then did the
Ottomans recognize the Habsburg ruler as an equal. Commensurately,
tribute payments ceased with that accord.55
In later years, Ottomans and Safavids would also sign agreements with
the Dutch and English, partially to elicit their support against Portuguese
and Spanish incursions into the straits of Hormuz and other areas of
strategic interest to them.56 The English queen, just as the Habsburg
emperor, was addressed as an equal.
The Mughals likewise started to sign agreements with the European
powers when their maritime expansion started to affect South Asia. Thus,
by the early 1580s, the Mughal emperor Akbar also “entered into direct
diplomatic contact with the Habsburgs.”57
7.2.3
Relations between the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires
The ability to flexibly reconcile the apparent tensions between equality
and universalist claims also appears in the relations between the Islamic
empires themselves. Thus, their rulers treated each other as equals, even
though they bestowed on each other the title “lord of the world” without
any sense of internal contradiction.58 So despite a rhetoric of legitimation
that justified their rule as world conquerors, in practice they found ways to
create shared norms and principles of international conduct. The shared
cognitive framework provided by Islam – even with its sectarian differences – and the shared Turco-Mongol legacies provided means to settle
disputes and regulate their affairs.
Mughal-Safavid relations were for the larger part peaceful even though
there were several reasons why one might have expected otherwise.
Mughals identified as Sunni and Safavid as Shi’a. But more importantly,
both had territorial claims on parts of what is today Afghanistan. The
Mughals conceptually thought of this area as their original homelands
that they wished to reclaim as part of their Timurid heritage. Moreover,
materially the Mughals significantly outweighed the Safavids.59
55
56
57
58
59
Severi 2001, 245; Guilmartin 1988, 741. Note that Severi uses the terms “armistice” and
“treaty” interchangeably (e.g., 229–30), although he suggests that Islamic rulers could
not conclude long-lasting treaties with unbelievers. Severi 2001, 245.
Matthee 2010, 249; Lewis 1982, 34.
Subrahmanyam 2006, 68. See also Alexandrowicz 1967, 90–94.
Hodgson 1974, vol. 3, 47, 82.
Farooqi mentions Central Asia as a cornerstone of the Mughal mind-set. Farooqi 2004,
62. Pardesi describes the attachment to Central Asia as part of cognitive priors. Pardesi
2019, 283. Following Stephen Dale’s figures, Pardesi suggests that “the Mughals controlled 100–145 million people, compared to 22 million and 10 million in the Ottoman
and Safavid realms” (282).
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Nevertheless, only a few brief wars erupted over the Afghan territories in
1622, and 1648, with the Mughal Empire eventually retreating from strategically important Kandahar. Strategic reasons no doubt played a role in
the overall cordial relations, given that the Mughal expansion focused
primarily on the South and the Deccan plateau. However, important conceptual factors played a role as well. First, the Safavids had aided the second
Mughal emperor Humayun to regain his throne after he lost it in 1538 to a
challenge by an Afghan rival, Sher Shah Suri. Safavid, Persian influence
from then on remained significant, and the Mughals self-consciously styled
themselves after their Safavid neighbors. “Humayun began to enrich the
Mughal myth of kingship . . . with borrowings from ancient Persian concepts. This trend was further explored under Akbar. It was expression in
visual terms by Jahangir and was continued and enriched by Shah Jahan.”60
In diplomatic protocol the Mughals consistently treated the Safavid rulers
as equals. Ottoman and Safavid emissaries were conspicuously given preferential status over emissaries from other countries, even if there was status
competition between the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal rulers. “The
Mughals granted exalted status to Safavid and Ottoman diplomats in protocol and elite perceptions, especially compared to the secondary polities of
the Islamicate realm, and sought equality with them.”61
Alliance patterns also differed from straightforward realist or sectarian
expectations. If one accepts Manjeet Pardesi’s calculations that the
Mughal Empire was hegemonic in material terms, realist calculations
might have suggested an alliance between the Safavid and Ottoman rulers
to balance against such a power. Alternatively, on sectarian grounds, a
Sunni alliance of Ottoman and Mughal empires against their Shi’a counterpart might have been expected. But no such alliances emerged.62
The main fault line lay between the Ottoman and Safavid empires who
engaged in multiple wars in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Conflicting territorial claims and doctrinal disputes exacerbated the
intensity of their struggles. The Ottoman sultan obtained religious sanction by fatwas that labeled the Shi’a Safavids as infidels, thus making the
killing of other Muslims justified and compatible with Shari’a injunctions.
Ottoman rulers emphasized in particular the Shi’a practice of cursing the
righteous first three caliphs.
60
61
62
Koch 2012, 199.
Pardesi 2017, 274. On the special status and treatment of Ottoman and Safavid envoys
compared to the envoys of other polities, also see Farooqi 2004, 83–85.
Farooqi notes that occasionally Ottomans and Mughals considered an alliance against
the Safavids, but this largely hinged on whether the Safavid threatened Mughal holdings,
particularly Kandahar. Farooqi 2004, 62, 66. No sustained Mughal–Ottoman alliance
emerged. Pardesi notes the absence of great power alliances, and sees instead a mutual
understanding of spheres of influence. Pardesi 2019, 286.
Collective Imagination and the Conduct of Interpolity Relations
231
Shared ideological frames, however, mitigated some of this conflict, as
they did in the case of Safavid-Mughal tensions. Conflict alternated with
benign relations. With regard to warfare between Muslim polities, special
norms prevailed.63 Warfare with other Muslims was in principle forbidden.
To gain legal sanction, the sultan required the approval of the Shaykh alIslam.64 The Ottoman sultan in his wars with the Safavid rulers thus
required a decision regarding the heretical status of the Shi’a Safavids.
But rather than indicate a dramatic cognitive rift, the conflict actually
required both sides to contest the same ideological ground. In order for the
Ottoman sultans to gain support from the jurists and ulama they had to
demonstrate that the Safavids had diverged from Islamic faith and violated
key injunctions. The Safavid rulers, and their Qizilbash allies, by contrast,
aimed to show that they, not the Ottomans, were the bearers of the true
faith. As Markus Dressler convincingly argues each actor tried to show
themselves as orthodox and their rival as heterodox, and they had to do so
by contesting the same ideological space. “The symbolic order and discursive field in which Ottomans and Safavids as well as Kızıilbaş acted
cannot be distinguished with clarity . . . their respective worldviews, selfimages, and terminologies were almost identical.”65 No doubt religious
antagonism together with the struggle for political supremacy played a role
in their conflict. However, the conflict operated against the backdrop of the
larger collective belief system of which they were part. In this sense, the
conflict was no different from the intra-Christian conflicts that roiled
Europe. The motives that propelled actors and the reasons they gave to
justify their actions occurred within the same conceptual space.
Tolerance for Shi’a pilgrims also constituted an area in which the
Ottomans had to show flexibility. Given that the sultan claimed to be
caliph and defender of the holy sites, he could not prohibit pilgrimage by
Shi’i through Ottoman controlled territory to Mecca and Medina. Thus,
even during the wars Shi’i could engage in the hajj, although their routes
could be circumscribed.66
In a similar manner, merchants could claim protection from either side.
Even as the Ottoman rulers formally proscribed blockades of the Safavid
lands, they at the same time prohibited the molestation of traveling
merchants. For example, when a Shi’a caravan was attacked by an
Ottoman garrison, the Safavid governor and owner of the caravan
63
64
65
66
De le Garza suggests that practices that were acceptable to Chinggis Khan or Timur had
become less so with their descendant Timurids, the Mughal Empire. Garza 2010, 261–71.
Çelik 2011, 19.
Dressler 2005, 151. The Qizilbash were among the most militant Shi’a and formed part
of the shock troop contingents in the Safavid army.
Tucker 1996, 19.
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complained to the Ottoman governor of Erzurum, the intended destination
of the caravan. The Ottoman governor thereupon prosecuted and executed
the perpetrators.67 Indeed, even in the sixteenth century, trade routes
expanded between Persian and western Anatolia despite the wars.68
Likewise, there is little evidence that the Ottoman blockade of the Safavid
Empire (1603–18) was enforced.
Interestingly, given the vituperative nature of Ottoman diatribes, “The
Safavid chronicles treated the Ottomans with much greater respect and
virtually never raised religious issues, preferring to portray the Ottomans
as worthy adversaries in battle, but more importantly, as victorious warriors of Islam against the Europeans.”69 The Safavids at least recognized a
common Islamic identity with the Ottomans.
Perhaps most remarkable were the continued friendly interactions.
“Interdynastic relations between the Ottomans and Safavids were characterized by numerous congratulatory letters, embassies, and gift
exchanges, particularly upon the enthronement of new monarchs.”70
Despite the sectarian schism, the shared adherence to the five pillars of
Islam also made rapprochement between the two parties possible.71
Given that Shi’i adhered to these as did the Sunni, Ottoman legal scholars
found grounds to object to the fatwa against the Persians. Thus, by the
time of the peace negotiations of 1736 between the Ottomans and Nader
Shah (who had a decade earlier ousted the Safavid dynasty), the
Ottomans “. . . justified the release of Shi’a prisoners as entirely compatible with Shari’a precepts. A process of change began in 1736 which
resulted ten years later [In the Treaty of Kerden] in the establishment of a
de jure framework for Ottoman–Iranian relations . . . based on recognizing the common Muslim identity of the two.”72
7.3
Islamic Legal Concepts and the Westphalian
State System
There are different perspectives as to whether the changes in policies from
the sixteenth century on signify that the Islamic concept of international
67
70
71
72
Riedlmayer 1981, 8–9. 68 Tucker 1996, 19. 69 Tucker 1996, 18.
Tucker 1996, 19. Between 1500 and 1750, there were twenty-two Ottoman embassies to
the Safavids, while the Safavids sent sixty-one missions to the Ottomans for the purposes
of exchanging gifts and congratulating the new rulers. Tucker 1996, 19, fn. 13.
The Five Pillars consist of the Shahadah, the recitation of the Muslim profession of faith;
the Salat, the ritual prayer five times each day; the Zakat, the paying of alms; Sawm,
fasting during the month of Ramadan, and the Hajj, pilgrimage to Mecca. Shi’a and
Sunni differ on the implementation of these but both acknowledge these duties. Various
branches of Shi’ism add several others. See Toorawa 2013.
Tucker 1996, 36; see also 30.
Collective Imagination and the Conduct of Interpolity Relations
233
order is compatible with that of the Westphalian state system. Perspectives
diverge on whether or not Islamic law with regard to the state, the subcomponent of Shari’a termed Siyar, can be reconciled with a Law
of Nations. According to the Hanafi scholar Shams al-Din al-Sarakshi
(d. 1096),
the word Siyar constitutes the plural form of sirah. This book was called by this
term, because it comprises the clarification of the method (sirah) of the Muslims in
their dealings with the disbelievers (mushrikun) of enemy nations (ahl al-harb), as
well as with the contract partners (ahl al-”ahd) among them, be they musta’minun
or ahl aldhimmah, with the apostates (murtaddū n) . . .; and with the rebels (ahl albaghi).73
Anke Bouzenita discusses the diverse positions on whether or not Siyar
is compatible with the modern law of nations. She herself suggests that
interpreting Islamic legal doctrine in the Siyar as fitting with modern
international law incorrectly reads modernist concepts back into older
Islamic doctrine.74 Siyar, and Shari’a more broadly, did not distinguish a
special legal category for relations between Muslim and non-Muslim
polities, and relations between Muslim states. Islamic law is monistic
and thus does not have a conception of a legal order between states.
Moreover, it lacks a concept of territoriality which she sees as fundamental to modern international law.
Majid Khadduri, by contrast, has strongly advanced the rival claim. In
his view, the two are reconcilable. He suggests that Islamic understanding
of international law has gone through three phases. In the first phase, he
concedes that Islamic doctrine and legal theory did not admit for sovereign equality, long-term agreements with non-Muslims, and territorial
delimitation of Islamic rule. However, this did not necessarily mean
continuous warfare. For example, Juan Manuel, prince of Villena in
Castille, described Islamic and Castilian relations of the thirteenth century as “Guerra fria” (a cold war).75
Gradually, however, Islamic legal doctrine and practice changed.
Focusing specifically on the French-Ottoman treaty of 1536 and the
ensuing decades in which the Ottomans concluded various agreements
with European rulers, Khadduri argues that Islamic legal theory went
through a decisive transformation. In his reading of the agreement there is
no doubt that the French king is perceived as an equal, and thus constitutes a recognition of the equality of states. Moreover, Article 1 stipulates
the peace is to last for the duration of their (Süleyman and Francis I) lives,
thus potentially well beyond the ten years of classical Islamic doctrine
73
As cited by Bouzenita 2007, 21.
74
Bouzenita 2007, 44.
75
Khadduri 1972, 47.
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(“durant la vie de chacun d’eux et pour les royaumes”).76 Khadduri also
emphasizes that the French citizens in Süleyman’s domain would be
exempt from the poll tax (jizya), free to practice their religions, and
have the right to be tried by their own consulates.77
Admittedly, adaptation to the Western principles of diplomacy was
slow and would only be completed in a third phase, by the early nineteenth century, when the Ottomans established permanent embassies and
were included in the Concert of Europe. But even prior to that, the
Ottomans had made major concessions to the demands of Europeans.
Indeed, by 1740, they even agreed that in lawsuits between foreigners
(French citizens) and Muslims the latter could be tried in foreign courts.
Similarly, changes in practice led to de facto accommodation with
territorial delimitation of authority. First, although there was a sense of
a shared religious community of believers, the umma, Muslim rulers, and
scholars had long recognized that the Islamic world itself was politically
divided. Territorial pluralism was a fact of Islamic conscience from its
inception. James Piscatori notes how the Mughals certainly were aware of
the limits to their power. Rather than continue to seek full territorial
control over the subcontinent, they delimited spheres of control in a
territorial manner.
The policy of the Indian Muslim rulers towards, first, the Mongols and, then, the
Hindu rulers of what is modern India demonstrates . . . that the Muslim prince was
perfectly capable of grasping, and practising, the principle of territoriality, with
regard non-Muslims.78
Khadduri attributes the change in mentality and doctrine to Ottoman
containment. In the early centuries of Islamic expansion jihad informed
doctrine and policy. However, as expansion stalled, practice and doctrine
started to diverge. The religious schism between Sunni and Shi’a provided
further impetus, once the schism became articulated in the rivalry of
Ottomans and Safavids. The latter, Khadduri argues, might be viewed as
similar to the Reformation struggles in Europe. As in Europe, the ecumenical rift in the Islamic world lead to the territorialization of religion.
Religious affiliation thus became part of domestic politics, and not foundational to the conduct of interstate relations. Interreligious compromise and
treaties were acceptable, contrary to classical Islamic doctrine.79 In so
doing, while classical Islamic jurists argued that Islamic code was personal
law and not a territorial code, Islamic rulers had started to de facto recognize the principle of territorially delimited authority.
76
77
79
“Traité de paix, d’amitié, et de commerce,” in Testa 1864.
Khadduri 1972, 47; Khadduri 1956, 361. 78 Piscatori 1986, 60.
Khadduri 1959, 50.
Collective Imagination and the Conduct of Interpolity Relations
235
Moreover, as the expansion of the Islamic powers stalled, they themselves
saw the need to establish greater certitude in the boundaries of their empires.
The Safavids, given their relatively weaker position, started to embrace this
idea soon after coming to power. “As early as 1512, Shah Ismaʿil . . .
implicitly gave up on a ‘millennial world revolution’ and settled on
‘Shiʿism in one country’ as part of his post-revolutionary consolidation.”80
The Ottomans, as well, gradually reconciled themselves to formal territorial boundaries. Following their defeat by the Habsburg imperial forces,
the Ottomans concluded the Treaty of Carlowitz (1699) and insisted on
stricter demarcation of the frontier with the Habsburgs and Russians.
Significant territories were also surrendered to the Austrian side. The
agreement thus established clear boundaries and territorial limits to
Ottoman authority.81 Article 18 stipulated that “commissioners on both
sides shall be appointed to fix and distinguish Limits and Boundarys . . . and
shall . . . distinguish, separate and determine the Confines with clear and
evident Boundarys, as they are constituted by the former Articles.”82 The
armistice was to hold for twenty-five years, open to extension (Article 20).
Ottoman compliance with the agreements was high, despite classical
Islamic doctrine suggesting that such agreements with Christian parties
could be temporary armistices at best. When border groups, who benefited
from the previous porous nature of the frontiers, allied with the grand
vizier, who opposed the treaty, the ensuing revolt was put down by force.83
On the eastern frontier, the Safavids and Ottomans concluded the
Treaty of Zuhab in 1639 that fixed their frontier until the end of the
Safavid Empire.84 Indeed, the treaty discussed the border in minute
detail. Thus, the principle of territorial demarcation of authority arose
among Islamic states as well.85
General principles of diplomatic protocol applied: Treaties should be
honored; Emissaries were to be treated with respect and not harmed;
Diplomatic contacts should be reciprocal. Secure travel for non-Muslims
would be guaranteed when granted a writ of safe passage – the aman.86
80
82
83
84
85
86
Matthee 2010, 256. 81 Abou el-Haj 1969, 467–68.
The text of the treaty between the German emperor and the Ottoman Sultan, see A
General Collection of Treatys and Commerce (London: Knapton, 1732), 290, accessed at
https://archive.org/stream/generalcollectio00lond#page/2/mode/2up.
Abou el-Haj 1969, 471–74. The Quranic injunction that oaths must be upheld would
also support that policy.
Matthee 2010, 258. Piscatori as well notes that the Ottoman–Safavid agreements on
frontiers were long lasting. Piscatori 1986, 63. For the text of the treaty, see British and
Foreign State Papers (1915), 763–66, accessed at www.fas.nus.edu.sg/hist/eia/documents_arc
hive/zuhab.php
See Ateş 2013. Ates particularly draws attention to the social changes for the borderlands
people who straddled the previous boundary zone.
Çelik 2011, 14.
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No doubt violations occurred – the French dignitaries of the joint
Habsburg-French mission, mentioned above, were not treated well.87
But general principles of diplomatic protocol – even if violated – were
not much different from that of Christian practices. Persian served as the
diplomatic language of choice.88
Norms and principles also existed for warfare with non-Muslims,
although here again various interpretations are possible. According to
some injunctions, when opposing troops surrendered they were supposed
to be treated humanely, although enslavement was not excluded.89
Mughal emperor Akbar opposed enslavement of war captives, who
should be considered dhimmis, and thus enjoy protected status.90
However, in practice, certainly in the earlier phases of Islamic expansion,
prisoners could be treated more harshly, even killed, or held for ransom.91
And again we may question whether the Law of Nations as it was
developing in Europe was any more accommodative than Islamic legal
principles. Gentili concluded that the Ottomans might be included in the
Ius Gentium provided they remained at peace with Christians. Unlike
cannibals, atheists, and pirates, they did not form natural enemies. Thus,
contrary to medieval doctrine, war could not be waged on them just
because they were infidels. However, since it was common knowledge
that Turks were always disposed to conflict, they posed an almost natural
enemy. Gentili compared the situation to the classical Greeks facing
barbarians. Consequently, alliances with infidels should be considered
illegitimate. Grotius differed from Gentili’s position regarding alliances
with infidels and viewed them as possibly legitimate, but he nevertheless
advocated a general league of Christian states against the Turk.92
Finally, we must proceed with caution when comparing Western legal
systems with Shari’a, and deriving implications from the latter for the
conduct of international relations. Beyond communal issues, the Shari’a
basically lacked the modern type of administrative law that had started to
emerge in West-European. Consequently, the Ottoman Kanun, the
Sultanic legal codes, became a critical legal instrument in parallel with
87
88
89
90
91
92
Khadduri notes how both sides violated diplomatic procedures with the Europeans,
resorting to bribery and intrigue, and the Ottomans abusing the foreign envoys.
Khadduri 1956, 364.
Hodgson 1974, vol. 3, 81; Çelik 2011, 16.
Inalcik gives an example of one city that surrendered to the Ottomans but maintained its
lands and exemption from Ottoman taxes. The Christian forces were then folded into the
Ottoman army. Inalcik 1960, 420. He further notes that Serbs were allowed to maintain
their own legal and financial system (421).
Hodgson 1974, vol. 3, 71.
Aboul-Enein and Zuhur 2004, 18. They also note prohibitions on suicide and hostage
taking.
Baumer 1944, 30–31. On Gentili and Grotius, also see Khadduri 1956, 362.
Collective Imagination and the Conduct of Interpolity Relations
237
Shari’a. The Kanun covered such matters as taxation, administration,
and penal law. Inferring the Islamic or Ottoman disposition on law simply
from the Shari’a would thus be incomplete or even incorrect.
To conclude, elements of Islamic doctrine seemingly challenged
some key features of the emerging Westphalian state system. Juridical
equality of sovereign authorities, territorial delimitation of sovereign
claims, and the legality and duration of international agreements,
were alien to many classical Islamic scholars. The doctrinal superiority of Islam (as superseding the revelations of Jewish and Christian
religion); the transterritorial nature of the religious community; and
prohibitions against long-term treaties with Christian states, appeared
to make reconciliation with European concepts of International law
impossible. The Turco-Mongolian heritage by means of which the
Islamic emperors justified their authority as “world conquerors” magnified this apparent incompatibility.
Flexibility in doctrinal interpretation, combined with practical considerations, however, militated a rigid stance vis-à-vis the Western norms
and principles. The Islamic empires that straddled the early modern era
gradually came to accept principles of sovereign equality, territorial limitation of authority, as well as the legitimacy of treaties with non-Muslim
states. Westphalian concepts were not so alien to the Islamic world as
sometimes claimed.
7.4
Ottoman Adjustment and European Colonialism
in the Nineteenth Century
7.4.1
Adjusting to the Westphalian Principles
The confrontation of the Western Great Powers and the Ottoman Empire
has led scholarship to focus particularly on the nineteenth century. By
then the Ottomans could be regarded as the “sick man of Europe,”
increasingly subject to external encroachment and internal centrifugal
forces. And indeed, by then the Ottoman Empire engaged in multiple
key reforms, culminating in the Tanzimat period (1839–76). But, as
discussed, the adjustment to the Western logic of the territorial state
system arguably started well before.
The defeat of the Ottoman armies at Vienna in 1683 marked a turning
point. From then on the Ottomans would be engaged in a protracted
process of retrenchment and retreat. In the sixteen years following the
defeat, the Ottomans had to relinquish Hungary and large parts of their
Balkan territories, culminating in the Treaty of Carlowitz. In concluding
this accord with the Holy League powers – Habsburg Austria, Poland,
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Venice, and Muscovy – the Ottomans accepted clearly differentiated
boundaries and the concept of territorial integrity.93 Fikret Adanir concludes that “with the Peace of Carlowitz the Ottoman Empire had
renounced its ideological positions and had accepted (1) the equality of
contracting states as a matter of principle, (2) a Christian power as a
mediator, and (3) a neutral ground as the location of negotiations – all
important norms of jus publicum Europeum.”94 From then on the duration of interstate agreements changed as well. Whereas previous agreements were conceived as temporary armistices of ten years or less, “from
the eighteenth century onwards, there also emerged some treaties of
perpetual peace, indicating the rejection of a future world united under
Islam.”95
Moreover, whereas changes and innovation had previously been
couched in terms of classical Islamic civilization, the Ottoman elites
became more and more open to European ideas and influences.
Following the Treaty of Passarowitz, which marked the beginning of the Tulip
Era, Ottoman dignitaries looked at the European states differently than in previous centuries, and started to appreciate at least some of the developments that
had already taken place in the Western states . . . European culture as well as
technology came into value and began to be imitated in Ottoman agenda as well.96
Whether by choice or ignorance, these changes went largely unnoticed
by Western observers who continued to see the Ottoman Empire as a
fundamental threat motivated by a backward Islamic mentality. Thus,
when the Ottomans asked Britain to mediate in the Russo-Turkish war
(1768–74), “neither Murray nor Lord Rochford took these advances very
seriously. They realized that they were merely the semi-instinctive reactions of an oriental court unable really to trust any ‘Frank’ power.”97
In reality, the Ottoman Empire had astutely recognized the intricacies
of European power politics. Their decision to intervene in the Polish
question, which then expanded to the ensuing Russo-Turkish war, was
not driven by an oriental mind-set but rather by the realization that
partition of Poland might have consequences for the Ottoman territories
as well.98 Their future and the Polish fate were linked. And indeed, in the
93
96
97
98
Abou-el Haj 1969, 467–68. 94 Adanir 2005, 397. 95 Burgis 2009, 58.
Gū ndoǧdu 2017, 73. The Treaty of Passarowitz (1718) concluded the wars with Austria
and Venice.
Anderson 1954, 50. (John Murray was the ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.) For an
example of how trustworthy European powers were in the game of Great Power politics,
we might pause on the example of Sweden. Gustavus III proposed a pact to Selim III
when Sweden attacked Russia in 1789. After Selim agreed, Sweden made a unilateral
agreement with Russia, scarcely a year later, without consulting the Ottomans, which
prompted Selim to note that “infidels are so unreliable.” Naff 1984, 161.
Adanir 2005, 401.
Collective Imagination and the Conduct of Interpolity Relations
239
decades following Ottoman defeat and the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca
(1774), Russia and other powers would continue to chisel away at the
Ottoman territories.
Increasing external pressures thus necessitated the sultanate to
upgrade its contacts with the Western powers, both to obtain important
knowledge of the intricate machinations of the Western imperial
powers, but also to obtain allies. In addition to these external pressures,
economic decline had led to a high demand for government positions,
which, by patronage and corruption, had led to a bloated and inefficient
bureaucracy.99
Sultan Selim III thus engaged in various bureaucratic reforms. Starting
in 1797 he dispatched permanent diplomatic representatives to England,
France, Austria, and Prussia.100 While this was the first formal creation of
diplomatic missions, in effect the Ottomans simply expanded on the
changes in diplomatic practices that commenced at the beginning of the
eighteenth century.
More and more Ottoman envoys started to be sent to European capitals, but
unlike in previous centuries, their task was not simply giving or receiving
letters or attending coronations, they were now also required to observe the
European states so that they might impersonate their style and technique in
conducting international relations such as negotiating alliances, treaties, and
agreement.101
Such changes did not go unchallenged. Selim’s reforms to rationalize the
bureaucratic apparatus and create a modern army ran into resistance by the
Janissaries and local magnates. With external supporters willing to foment
internal strife, Selim was deposed and assassinated in 1807. The permanent embassies were discontinued only a few years later.102 The historical
record thus contradicts Thomas Naff’s account. Although he acknowledges the incentives for entrenched interest groups to resist reforms, he
nevertheless insists that even by the late eighteenth century “the Ottomans’
concept of their state as an Asian-based land empire that grew by warfare
against infidels remained entrenched, however myopic.”103 Instead, the
evidence suggests that domestic interest groups who favored the old order
for self-interested reasons attempted to forestall adjustments, not dissimilar
to the opposition to reform in China and Japan.
Despite the reversal, Selim’s successor Mahmud II pressed on with
reforms in the army, bureaucracy, and school system. The defeat by
Egypt in 1833, in which Muhammad Pasha’s army had threatened the
Ottoman heartland itself, made reforms even more urgent. Diplomatic
99
102
Findley 1972, 414. 100 Findley 1972, 395–98. 101 Gū ndoǧdu 2017, 74.
Adanir 2005, 403; Findley 1972, 395. 103 Naff 1984, 151.
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representatives were dispatched by 1834. Two years later, the Re’is ulkuttab (Re’is Effendi), the head of the Chancery, was retitled as the
Foreign Minister. The position of grand vizier was abolished by 1838.
Officials became salaried rather than fee collecting bureaucrats that were
subject to corruption. As Findley notes, Mahmud created a “patriciate of
the pen.”104 Civil equality for non-Muslims was decreed as well, to
eliminate the pretext used by foreign powers for intervention, and in an
attempt to quell nationalist fervor.
The nineteenth century also heralded major changes in the conceptualization of territorially circumscribed authority. The early Ottomans certainly had a concept of boundaries (hadd or hudud).105 Boundary marking
served to delineate where one’s domain ended and a rival entity claimed
its domain. But these were considered to be fluid, and could be based on
geographical features, religion, trade routes, and so on. Maps depicting
these boundaries were not necessarily meant to capture a material reality
but also served to legitimate the ruler or to project an aspirational goal.106
They were meant to project a narrative of power.
Gradually this concept of boundaries and frontiers changed to the
principle of borders, mutually agreed formal demarcations of spheres of
authority, and with the change, maps took on different functions. If the
Ottomans had only grudgingly accepted mutually agreed borders after the
defeat at Vienna and other military reversals, by the nineteenth century,
they themselves insisted on the sanctity of treaties and border delimitation. As the Western powers encroached on Ottoman holdings in North
Africa, the Balkans, and the Caucasus, the Ottomans attempted to hold
the remaining territories by insisting that formal borders be respected.
Cartography played a key role in this process by delineating more
precise borders. Maps also served to create a particular identity. They
connected the materially occupied space with the Ottoman sociopolitical
self-image. They were “logo-maps” in which the territorial shape of the
state represented the state as a specific political historical entity.107 Rather
than follow European, continent specific maps, which showed the
Ottomans at the margins of the European continent, and on the margins
of the maps of Asia and Africa, the Ottoman maps showed the territorial
104
105
106
107
Findley 1972, 388–89, 409–11.
Multiple terms were used sometimes interchangeably. Thagr or uc were commonly used
to define the frontier zone between Islamic and non-Islamic territories. Another term
used by Ottomans and Safavids was sinur. Other terms could be employed as well. Ateş
2013, 13–19.
Brummet 2007, 15–58.
Fortna 2005, 30. Hence, maps were instrumentally used to depict a particular preferred
image of the polity and not necessarily devised to represent the de facto situation. The
concept of logo-maps is from Anderson 1991.
Collective Imagination and the Conduct of Interpolity Relations
241
holdings across all continents as one coherent whole. Maps were thus
crafted to depict a unified Ottoman territory across different ethnicities
and religious groups.
The circulation of such maps, however, also had unintended consequences. Benjamin Fortna makes the fascinating observation that the
previous lack of precise delimitation of territory constituted a major
advantage. De facto conditions, such as a loss of territory, need not
challenge the professed image of the empire. Maps did not depict facts
on the ground. The projection of universality and power could remain
intact, and thus also the legitimacy of imperial authority. When maps
became representational and public, losses of territory and the diminishing size of the empire could now be held against the extant authorities.
The earlier lack of attention to border delimitation might thus have had
instrumental purposes rather than indicating any technical inability to
create cartographic maps, or an inability to grasp the concept of sovereign
territoriality. Universal claims to authority were best made without representational maps.
But both the government and society in the Ottoman Empire had taken
an active interest in map-making well before the nineteenth century. The
Ottoman state was interested in practical cartography from its inception,
and some of the earliest surviving maps pertained to military operations as
well as architectural designs. Mehmed II (1444–46, 1451–81) was thus
keen to obtain up-to-date maps on Europe and other regions. The
Ottomans were well acquainted with European map-making enterprises,
and had a tradition in cartography well before the introduction of
European military cartography by the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries.108
The formalization of borders and the use of cartography was not just
directed to the Western powers. The Ottomans also engaged in more
precise border delimitation with the Safavids as well as the later Persian
Qajar Dynasty (1785–1925). During the Ottoman–Safavid wars the
108
Karamustafa 1992, 210, 213. Maps by Gerardus Mercator and Johannes Blaeu were
translated into Turkish shortly after their release, and by 1730 the Ottomans had
introduced printed maps. Karamustafa 1992, 218. Whether the Ottoman cartographic
practices had reached Western proficiency by the late nineteenth century is a matter of
debate. Yuval Ben-Bassat and Yossi Ben-Artzi argue that the Ottomans still lagged in
this regard, evinced in the discussions regarding the borders between British-controlled
Egypt and the Ottoman Empire in 1906. Ben-Bassat and Ben-Artzi 2015, 25–36.
However, this does not suggest that the Ottomans were unable to conceptually grasp
the concept of territorial demarcation of spheres of authority. As Benjamin Fortna
argues, “Ottoman correspondence from this period shows that officials were checking
geographical publications with an eye to the correct delimitation of, for example, the
borders with Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria.” Fortna 2005, 25. He suggests further that
Ottoman cartography was open to foreign techniques and had a capacity for synthesis.
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The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
combatants had signed multiple agreements to delineate their respective
boundaries. Usually the treaties delineated such boundaries by references
to cities or natural geographic features rather than straight lines. As a
consequence, they remained frontier zones in which local magnates bargained with the respective empires and operated with relative autonomy.
Consequently, the frontier zones defined by the 1639 Treaty of Zohab
that concluded a century of conflict between the empires was more than
160 kilometers wide in some areas.109 The peoples in these zones maintained multiple shifting loyalties and the authority of Ottoman and
Safavid governments was indirect at best. Nevertheless, the Treaty maintained the peace for eighty years and was only challenged when the
Afghans invaded the Safavid Empire and brought it to an end. Ateş
interestingly speculates that the Treaty of Zohab and the Peace of
Westphalia of 1648 were interlinked. “It will not be an exaggeration to
suggest that these processes were part of an intercontinental phenomenon
that encompassed Western Europe and Eurasia.”110
By the nineteenth century, external pressure mounted to more precisely delineate the Ottoman–Iranian boundaries. In addition to meeting
this external pressure, the Tanzimat reforms required boundary delimitation and demarcation as part of the larger state-building effort. Inevitably
this meant changes in “patterns of exchange, notions of belonging, and
migratory movements,” and they “necessitated a complicated separation
of myriad ethno-religious and tribal groups . . . into citizens of Iran or the
Ottoman Empire.”111 Governments aimed to impose uniform state identities, no different from their European counterparts.
As was the case with reforms in Qing China, the Ottoman reforms were
aimed at bolstering the empire against European encroachment. The
European territorial states that aspired to increasingly become nationstates dictated the need to engage in technological development and
social reforms. But these reforms were also driven by the Ottoman desire
to enter the new imperial game itself – as Japan did. By styling itself as
similar to France, Britain, and other European states, the revamped
Ottoman Empire sought to maintain or even expand its holdings, particularly in Africa. Since the empire had conformed to European views of
modernity, the empire should be entitled to engage in European practices; old imperialism was recast as modern colonialism.
To do so, they utilized the same international legal terminology that
their European counterparts deployed in the negotiations in the 1884–85
Berlin Conference, which came to epitomize the Scramble for Africa.
Like the Germans they used the concept of “hinterland” to claim interior
109
Ateş 2013, 23, fn. 83.
110
Ateş 2013, 24.
111
Ateş 2013, 3, 5.
Collective Imagination and the Conduct of Interpolity Relations
243
territories based on coastal occupation. Similarly, they argued that
improving communications and infrastructure entitled them to sovereign
control over territories deep into North Africa, using the doctrine of
“effective occupation.”112
To conclude, the later Ottoman rulers engaged in multiple political
reforms and restructured the traditional framework in which they had
conducted interstate affairs. This amounted to nothing short of a conceptual revolution. They acquiesced to formal territorial borders, recognized other states as sovereign, started to develop Western practices of
diplomatic protocol, and regarded foreign rulers as equals. They had
transformed to the Westphalian state model.
7.4.2
Setbacks and Exclusion
One aspect of Western modernity, however, proved more problematic for
the composite Islamic empires. The Western states sought to create
integrated national communities by public education, the creation of a
national army, and a nationalist historiography. Peasants, as Eugen
Weber famously remarked, had to be made into Frenchmen.113 Given
their level of economic and military successes, these states proved attractive models to emulate. The model of the nation-state loomed large and
created problems for all multicultural and multiracial empires, not just for
the Ottomans. As we have seen, these empires had integrated their multiple religious, ethnic, and racial groups by institutional designs and by
multivocal means of legitimation. The homogenization required by the
nation-state contradicted such strategies.
Particularly, the successful Greek revolt that culminated in its independence in 1830 proved problematic for the Ottomans.
Only gradually did one grasp that the romantic notion of nation as an organic
community with a common language, a collective soul and a shared destiny was
the greatest challenge of all . . . For it was crystal clear that creating a Greek
kingdom at the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, whereas the majority of
Greeks lived all over the Ottoman Empire, could not be conducive to peace;
future irredentism in this kingdom and its conflicts with the Ottoman Porte were
inevitable.114
The Tanzimat reforms had attempted to meet these pressures by
instilling a sense of homogeneity. The Ottoman government erased the
distinctions between Muslims and non-Muslims, starting with the
decrees of 1839 and 1856. But despite these and other attempts to instill
a sense of integration, the Ottoman approach failed to diminish
112
Minawi 2016, 46–50.
113
Weber 1976.
114
Adanir 2005, 405.
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The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
nationalist demands. The attempt to “normalize” their populations into a
homogeneous whole contradicted the multicultural logic of the earlier
empire.
To discuss the long and complicated history of nationalist movements
throughout the Ottoman territories is beyond the purposes of this book. I
note them in this context only to highlight that the final disintegration of
the Ottoman Empire cannot simply be ascribed to a lack of adaptation
and innovation, and unwillingness to engage the Westphalian system.115
No doubt there were strong domestic opponents to reform, but this is
different from ascribing stagnancy and ignorance to the Ottomans.
Indeed, “The early modern Ottoman Empire was so aggressive and
innovative, in fact, that it was often other European states that seemed
listless and fixed.”116 Likewise Palmira Brummett notes that the period
from 1750 to 1850 was “a period of dramatic transformation for the
empire.”117 More specifically, I have argued that these adjustments
made it quite compatible with the Westphalian system.
Despite these adjustments, the Ottoman Empire failed to be fully
integrated into the Western system. But this was due to choices made
by the Western powers rather than “Eastern” ignorance or inability.
Those powers continued to exclude the Ottoman Empire from the Law
of Nations, even though treaties and alliances increasingly inserted the
empire into the Great Power politics of Europe. When in 1815 the subject
arose as to whether the Ottomans should be included in the Congress of
Vienna, the Russians objected, describing them as “barbarous.”
Castlereagh, who favored their admission, regarded them as possibly
barbarous, but “a necessary evil.”118 Castlereagh’s position lost.
The Russians were not alone in rejecting the Ottomans on the grounds
that they were not a Christian nation. The Holy Alliance (the name itself
is descriptive) between Russia, Austria, and Prussia in 1815 thus explicitly stated their Christian foundation, “The Emperor of Austria, the
King of Prussia, and the Emperor of Russia, having . . . acquired the
intimate conviction of the necessity of settling the steps to be observed
by the Powers, in their reciprocal relations, upon the sublime truths which
the Holy Religion of our Saviour teaches.”119 Interstate relations with
115
116
117
119
The status of the sultan changed in the process. In the course of the seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries, sacral kingship became less important, accentuated by the
depositions of seven sultans. Tezcan 2007, 171, 185.
Aksan and Goffman 2007, 7. Gommans argues that earlier, the Mughal Empire was also
engaged in adaptation and innovation. Gommans 1995, 261.
Brummett 2007, 17 118 Khadduri 1956, 365.
Preamble of the Holy Alliance Treaty of 1815, accessed at www.napoleon-series.org/
research/government/diplomatic/c_alliance.html.
Collective Imagination and the Conduct of Interpolity Relations
245
Christian states were to be treated as distinct from agreements with nonChristian states.
Even though some of the agreements with European powers seemed to
mark a change in the first half of the nineteenth century, the Ottoman
Empire was only included in the Concert of Europe by 1856 in the Treaty
of Paris, which concluded the Crimean War.120 Article 7 declared that the
Sublime Port was admitted to join in the advantages of public law and the
Concert of Europe and guaranteed Ottoman territorial integrity.121 Thus
for some international legal scholars of that period, such as Oppenheim,
the Treaty of Paris marked the moment when “international law ceased to
be a law between Christian States solely.”122 Others, such as McKinnon
Wood, by contrast, argue that Article 7 actually had less to do with the
Ottoman legal status than with an acknowledgment of its status in the
balance of power. “It is not an instance of the recognition of an Oriental
State as a subject of that law.”123
Regardless of how one views this article the Ottomans continued to be
subject to asymmetric treaties despite the Treaty of Paris. Ottoman
requests to end the extraterritorial agreements with Western powers
(the capitulations) went unheeded until after World War I, with the end
of the empire.124
Moreover, the territorial inviolability of the Ottoman territories that was
supposed to be guaranteed by the Treaty of Paris proved ephemeral. The
war with Russia in 1877–78 led to a loss of one-third of Ottoman territory
and a fifth of its population.125 Even countries that had fought on the side
of the Ottoman Empire during the Crimean War shortly thereafter set their
120
121
122
123
125
Adanir suggests that the Ottomans’ participation in the Treaty of London (1840) in
order to pacify the Levant marked “a milestone in Ottoman integration into the
European system.” Adanir 2005, 406. Hence, Ottoman participation in his view started
before 1856. McKinnon Wood similarly argues that the Ottoman Empire was de facto
already integrated in that system and was perceived as a key factor in the balance of
power. McKinnon Wood 1943, 265, 267.
The key phrase of Article 7 stated that Great Britain Austria, France, Prussia, and Russia
included the Ottomans in the Concert as a participant in the system of public law, and
guaranteed its territorial integrity (“déclarent la Sublime Porte admise à participer aux
avantages du droit public et du concert Européens. Leurs Majestés s’engagent, chacune
de son coté, a respecter l’indépendence et l’integrité territoriale de l’Empire Ottoman:
garantissent en commun la stricte observation de cet engagement”). McKinnon Wood
1943, 263.
McKinnon Wood 1943, 274. Naff also draws attention to the Convention of 1840 in
which the Great Powers agreed not to seek unilateral or exclusive territorial changes to
the Ottoman domains. Naff 1984, 168–69.
McKinnon Wood 1943, 274. 124 Kayaoǧlu 2010, 104–5.
Fortna 2005, 24. Burgis as well notes the inherent contradiction between admitting the
Sublime Porte to the European system and then encroaching on its sovereignty and
territories. Burgis 2009, 59.
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The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
sights on Ottoman territories. England, in essence, annexed Egypt in 1882,
and France took Tunisia in 1881.
As Western ambitions became fully clear, the embrace of Western
practices became more guarded. The Tanzimat period concluded by
1876 with the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid (1876–1909). Even though
he pressed through with reforms, the uncritical acceptance of Western
society and culture, particularly from France, was a thing of the past.
Well after the Ottoman admission to the Congress, Western international legal scholars continued to wonder whether Muslim countries had
similar standards of honoring treaties. Even at the beginning of the
twentieth century, one legal specialist opined that “the tendency of the
Mohammedans to violate their covenants with non-Moslems could be
seen even during the life of the Arabian Prophet.”126 And, as indicated at
the outset of this chapter, Lord Curzon in 1907 still disparaged the
“Asiatic mind.” With such an attitude, the ultimate partitioning of the
Ottoman Empire was not difficult to justify.
In short, the Ottomans were excluded from full integration with the
West, and excluded from legal protection under international law, not
because of their unwillingness to adjust to Western principles of international conduct, but because they failed to meet the Western view of what
was deemed “civilized.” International legal scholars in the United States,
Britain, Germany, and France advanced various criteria based on racial
and ethnic markers and assessed other polities against such criteria.127
Those that met the European criteria were deemed civilized. They were
the “normal” polities of civilization. Those that did not meet the standard
of civilization were the “abnormal,” the “barbaric,” or “undeveloped.”
The instrumental use of that standard conveniently legitimized European
powers to pursue their own empires across the globe.128 By denying the
Ottoman Empire civilized status, their territories became legitimate targets for the European colonial powers.
The Ottoman strategy of integrating itself into the European states
system and the Law of Nations thus failed to provide the protection of
Ottoman domains as intended. By the 1890s European encroachment
had exposed how it used international law. “It was never intended to
protect the rights of weak parties, which ultimately spelled disaster for the
empire’s negotiating strategy.”129
As was the case with Qing China, European policy created a perfect
irony by inverted logic. European colonial powers, backed by positivist
legal scholarship of the nineteenth century, regarded the Islamic polities
126
129
Ion 1911, 272, fn. 23.
Minawi 2016, 144.
127
Orakhelashvili 2006, 318–28.
128
Anghie 2004.
Collective Imagination and the Conduct of Interpolity Relations
247
as uncivilized, and thus not fully part of the Law of Nations, regardless of
Article 7 and the Treaty of Paris. The capitulations, the extraterritorial
agreements on which the Western states themselves insisted, were now
presented as evidence of Ottoman inability to exercise its sovereignty
within its own domain.130 By the same reasoning, the European powers
also conveniently omitted that the Dutch Republic in its treaty with Persia
(1631) had granted capitulations to the Persians and that other European
states had made similar agreements with the Ottomans.131 Consequently,
using the Ottoman capitulations as markers of inferiority, the Ottoman
Empire could now be denied the protection of territorial sovereignty that
formed the key trait of the Westphalian system.
7.5
Conclusion
The various polities of the Islamic ecumene constituted an international society, not dominated by any hegemonic actor, but based on a
shared collective imagination – a shared social and political culture.
Their collective imagination of what the political and social world
was, and what it should be, defined the ultimate ends worth pursuing;
how those ends might be obtained; and who was to be included as a
member of one’s community or regarded as a potentially hostile
outsider.132
Collective Imagination informed material practice. No doubt power
differentials created permissive conditions, but why polities pursued certain goals depended on how they saw the world, and how they viewed the
goals worth fighting and dying for. Thus, Muslim rulers, like any other,
were not devoid of instrumental calculations. They aspired to greatness
and sought territorial gains. But the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals
did so against the backdrop of a shared cultural framework that braided
Islam synergistically with other influences, particularly from the TurcoMongol sphere.
130
131
132
Orakhelashvili 2006, 327.
Alexandrowicz 1967, 119–24. An earlier agreement had been reached between the
Dutch East India Company in 1623. The Treaty of 1631 was drawn up between the
Safavid court and the Estates General of the Dutch Republic. In short, it had the status
of a treaty. Alexandrowicz also notes that unilateral capitulations had been granted to
Muslim merchant communities in Austria and other East European states.
Alexandrowicz 1967, 123–24.
Alessandro Pizzorno’s description of four modes of control is insightful in this regard.
Pizzorno 1987, 35–39. Collective imagination creates a shared sense of knowledge
regarding ultimate ends. It also provides the foundation for shared rules and rituals
that reiterate the ultimate ends worth pursuing. It delineates how resources and activities
should be devoted to these ends (including the very definition of one’s interest in the first
place). And finally, collective imagination serves to classify enemies from friends.
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The Islamic Cultural–Historical Community
If adjustment to Western practices and views came slowly, one must
keep in mind that the Westphalian system itself arguably took a long time to
arrive at full fruition. Although the Peace of Westphalia (1648) is taken as
an important transitional point, it was neither the end, nor the completion
of the process. Feudal remnants continued to exist in many European
states until the French Revolution, the subsequent Napoleonic control
over the continent, and even decades beyond. In this sense, the Islamic
empires were no different.
Far from being passive recipients of European norms and practices,
they actively sought to adjust to the expansionist drive of the West. The
Ottomans, and other non-Western polities, were not passive bystanders,
but they consistently attempted to transform their internal and external
practices to the emerging conditions brought about by modernity and the
European incursions.
I argue, therefore, that the Islamic empires, and specifically the nineteenthcentury Ottoman Empire, were not antithetical to the principles of the
international order that the Europeans adhered to. Even as the Ottoman
Empire claimed to embody the caliphate, it simultaneously adopted the
key principles of the Westphalian territorial state system and its correlate
practices. Despite a tradition of universalist claims to rule and the
exulted titles of their rulers, from the sixteenth century onward, they
increasingly accepted juridical equality, territorial limits to authority,
durable treaties with Muslim and non-Muslim states, and the rules of
Western diplomatic protocol. The very flexibility and multivocality that
informed the logic of organization of these empires made adjustment to
the territorial state model possible. Appreciation of heterogeneity did
not imply incompatibility. The claim of Islamic and Ottoman incompatibility had more to do with European colonial ambitions.
However, the attempt to transform from multiethnic empire to nationstates, that is, the attempt to create homogeneous entities of citizens,
proved gravely consequential. It contradicted the very logic of the traditional imperial organization. In doing so, these empires altered the composite nature of administration and the multivocality of legitimation that
had critically provided the flexibility needed to survive in highly diverse
societies. It was the pursuit of homogeneity rather than the principles of
territoriality and sovereignty that was contradictory to the logic or organization in the Ottoman Empire.
After-the-fact analyses of Ottoman decline have given a distorted view.
Accounts of intransigence, lack of innovation, and unwillingness to compromise can be readily presented, since the end result – the partition of the
Ottoman Empire and the emergence of Turkey – is clear. Flawed historiography has covered the tracks of the numerous reforms and the fundamental
Collective Imagination and the Conduct of Interpolity Relations
249
changes that the later Ottoman Empire underwent. Hence, it leads to a
narrative of unidirectional European expansion. Even if some of this scholarship acknowledges some Ottoman changes, it often stresses “a ‘creative
appropriation’ of the ‘real thing’ that developed in Europe.”133 As Mostafa
Minawi eloquently articulates, “A historical narrative that focuses on the
final result as one of failure often masks many more informative stories of
participation, innovation, and interim successes along the way.”134
Instead of a unidirectional imposition of European norms, values, and
procedural rules of international relations, these empires and their succeeding states actively sought to transform their societies and political
systems. In so doing, they influenced, and continue to influence, the
development and the nature of international society today.
133
134
Tezcan 2007, 167.
Minawi 2016, 142. Similarly, Suraiya Faroqhi notes that “it makes little sense to
sweepingly dismiss the years between the death of Süleyman the Magnificent (1566)
and the final demise of the empire after the First World War as an undifferentiated
period of decline.” Faroqhi 2015, 326.
Part IV
Collective Imagination among the Polities
of Southeast Asia
8
The Galactic Polities of Southeast Asia
As we are to deal with meaning, let us begin with a paradigm: viz., that
sacred symbols function to synthesize a people’s ethos . . . the picture
they have of the way things in sheer actuality are, their most comprehensive ideas of order.
Clifford Geertz1
The primary notion with which we shall have to deal is the belief in the
parallelism between Macrocosmos and Microcosmos, between the universe and the world of men . . . Harmony between the empire and the
universe is achieved by organizing the former as an image of the latter, as
a universe on a smaller scale.
Robert Heine-Geldern
8.1
Introduction
The political order of Southeast Asia differed in important respects from
other regions. In Europe, a decentralized state system gradually emerged
from the late Middle Ages forward. Occasional hegemonic powers dominated the European system but formal hierarchy was averted. Political
decentralization however was offset by the presence of an international
society based on shared cultural norms and principles. The Middle East
and North Africa were politically decentralized as well, but here Islam
provided a shared monotheistic religion that intertwined with TurcoMongol influences to create a shared cultural order. Variant theological
interpretations and sectarian differences could lead to violent clashes, but
Islam provided the shared frame of reference to understand the political
and social world. In East Asia, China aimed to create a Sino-centric
world, claiming to stand at the apex of a Confucian-inspired order.
While not pursuing formal imperial control over territories in East and
1
Geertz, influenced by Gilbert Ryle, argued that understanding other cultures requires
sorting out structures of signification, by means of “thick description.” He further suggested that “cultural patterns . . . provide a template or blueprint for the organization of
social and psychological processes.” Geertz 1973, 9, 216.
253
254
Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia – most notably Vietnam, Korea, and Japan – the Chinese
nevertheless asserted informal control over their tributary states.
Southeast Asia, however, was never controlled by any single power.
While Southeast Asian rulers claimed to be “world conquerors,” in reality
the region was never consolidated into a single empire, or even under the
shadow of a hegemonic polity. Rather, it remained a decidedly polycentric region with multiple powers vying with one another.
Moreover, while Europe and the Islamic world were profoundly influenced by dominant religions, and while the Sino-centric order hinged on
a central philosophical system, Southeast Asia showed greater heterogeneity. Multiple cultural influences permeated the region with Hinduism
and Buddhism as the main religions vying with widely diverse local
customs and beliefs.
Nevertheless, I argue that the Southeast Asian world constituted an
international society, contrary to arguments that international society was
exclusive to the European state system.2 The Southeast Asian society,
however, was not based on hegemonic imposition, nor was it due to
instrumental design. Instead this society originated over the course of
centuries of material and cultural exchanges. I thus advance a structural
approach in which collective imagination created a shared understanding
of the political world and the relations between the various polities of this
region.
As Anthony Reid notes, Southeast Asian polities exhibited a large
amount of economic interaction, frequent military conflict, and a high
degree of cultural exchange. He observes similarities in how rulers across
Southeast Asia legitimated their authority through architecture, the common use of the title Chakravartin (the world ruler or world conqueror
endowed with Dharma), the possession and meaning of a historical
capital, and the use of specific sacred images and regalia. Likewise,
Oliver Wolters argues for the existence of common Indian influences
throughout Southeast Asia as well as shared normative principles, such
as the greater relevance of personal achievement vis-à-vis lineal descent.3
The region displayed shared ideas of social and political order despite
the variation in types of economic activity, despite differences in the
impact of maritime trade, and despite disparities in relative power
between the polities of the region. It would be incorrect to deduce the
2
3
The early English School remained largely Eurocentric, as I discussed in Chapter 3; see
Bull 1977. Likewise Lucian Pye argued that there was never a Southeast Asian system of
interstate relations. Pye 1998, 4, 6. He viewed systems as the result of conscious design
and a calculated balance of power politics.
Reid 1993b, 5–7. Reid uses Benedict Anderson’s notion of an “imagined community” to
describe this “Hindu world.” Anderson 1991; see also Wolters 1999, 47, 110, 151.
The Galactic Polities of Southeast Asia
255
logic of social and political organization simply from material conditions
such as the importance of agriculture versus maritime commerce, or from
the demands required by intensive rice cultivation. Consequently, theories that have focused on material bases to explain the conduct of
Southeast Asian polities have failed to understand their logic or organization, or to capture the complexity of these polities.4 This shared cultural
order affected not only interactions between the polities of this region but
also their reaction to the first European arrivals.5
Only in later centuries did the patterns of order gradually shift toward a
more centralized model. Rulers then began to avail themselves of Islam,
which started to make inroads in Southeast Asia by the late fifteenth
century. They also took advantage of the economic changes sparked by
European trading networks to claim greater powers for themselves.6
Nevertheless, as this chapter illuminates, older cognitive schemas continued to influence the social and political order. Clifford Geertz suggests
that, “Concepts of government in traditional Indonesia were those upon
which the classic Hinduized states of the fourth to fifteenth centuries were
built, concepts that persisted in somewhat revised and weakened form
even after these states were first Islamicized and then largely replaced or
overlaid by the Dutch colonial regime.”7 Indeed, this shared cultural
foundation still provides the starting point for some analyses of presentday politics in Southeast Asia.8 Amitav Acharya, for example, starts his
contemporary analysis of the region with an overview of the early modern
and precolonial periods to conceptually anchor these polities.
Thus, while admitting to the multiple variations and localized adoptions, overall one can recognize similar patterns of rule as well as a shared
4
5
6
7
8
Wisseman Christie 1995, 272, 275. Instead, she suggests that the negara state model,
pioneered by Geertz, better grasps polities such as the Mataram state of the eighth to tenth
centuries. By contrast, Geertz’s work has also received blistering criticism from some
renowned scholars of Indonesia, such as Ricklefs 1983.
In this case we are more than ever imprinted by the constraints of our vocabulary. Thus, to
highlight these constraints, I have sometimes used interchangeable terms – “interstate
relations,” or “relations between the polities,” or “international” – to remind the reader
that we are not dealing with Weberian bureaucratic rational states or with nation-states.
However, the list of scholars across all disciplines who use the term “international” is so
vast that one cannot avoid the term altogether when engaging this literature.
Victor Lieberman forcefully advances the argument that broad similarities existed across
Europe, East, and Southeast Asia. Lieberman 2003b. I fully concur that broad systemic
pressures increasingly affected more and more actors as globalization increased in scope
and pace. However, long-standing cultural frames influenced how polities confronted
these global pressures in diverse ways.
Geertz 1973, 222. Islam made few inroads in mainland Southeast Asia, with the exception
of the Malay states. On the mainland, Theravada Buddhism became dominant, but in all
instances, local influences led to cultural syncretism. Wendt and Nagel 2015, 611.
Acharya 2012.
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Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
collective understanding of the structure of the polity.9 These shared
cognitive frames emerged even though the geographic sphere of economic
and cultural interaction greatly exceeded the political influence, let alone
control, of any one polity – providing another refutation that outside of
Europe regional economic orders were absorbed into universal empires.10
Even if this was anarchy as understood in the classical sense by scholars of
international relations in that it lacked formal hierarchy, it evinced a
shared social and cultural order. The polities in the region were part of
an interstate society. Thus, Reinhard Wendt and Jürgen G. Nagel rightly
contend that, “This is a region containing a whole series of shared
elements that not only lend it an internal coherence but also clearly
distinguish it from the wider world beyond.”11
In Chapters 8 and 9, I argue that Southeast Asian polities were explicitly premised on a dualistic understanding along two dimensions. At the
micro-cosmic level it was based on a specific understanding of the relation
of the individual to the community and its ruler, with the latter as a “world
creator.” On the macro-cosmic level it was grounded on the parallelism of
the polity to the spiritual realm, with the ruler as the conduit between the
two realms. The ideal ruler, the Chakravartin, did far more than create
“order” in our contemporary, secular understanding of the term. He
made the spiritual realm manifest on earth. The rulers of such polities
created the axes mundi, the conduits between the material world and the
divine realm.12 Peoples throughout the region shared cultural schemata
regarding the relation between the material and spiritual worlds, as well as
the mediating role of political authority between these two realms.
Such cultural schemata resemble what Bourdieu regards as doxa, “that
which is beyond question and which each agent tacitly accords by the
mere fact of acting in accord with social convention.” This is the “universe of the undiscussed.”13 These collective beliefs were founded on
Buddhist and Brahmanic principles but refracted over the course of
centuries and with individual inflections appropriate to local conditions.
The particular organization of the political order had profound consequences for how these polities differentiated themselves from each other.
Whereas a Westphalian system explicitly delimits and demarcates the
boundaries of the polity by territorial inclusion and exclusion, Southeast
9
10
11
13
With regard to Indonesia, Mochtar Lubis observes that common traditions can be
discerned despite 250 languages and dialects. Lubis 1987, 20.
This was the claim of some of the early English School scholars, whom I discussed in
Chapters 2 and 3.
Wendt and Nagel 2015, 555. 12 Eliade 1959.
Bourdieu 1977, 168. Similarly, we might discern parallels with the sociological understanding of “taken-for-grantedness.” See, e.g., DiMaggio and Powell 1983.
The Galactic Polities of Southeast Asia
257
Asian polities lacked any clear delimitation of authority, let alone demarcation. Authority, based on personal relations rather than territorial control,
flowed outward in concentric patterns from the dominant political center.
The concept of authority restricted by fixed territorial borders was alien to
this cultural order. The polities were based on “cultural integrity” rather
than “territorial integrity.”14 As Carl Trocki observed,
In other words, Southeast Asian kingdoms, or states, or polities, or whatever we
want to call them, were not seen to exist either substantively or figuratively as
contiguous blocks of territory surrounded by sharply defined borders. Rather they
were towns surrounded by undefined territory. Borders, or frontiers were broad
zones of emptiness, and to some extent were systematically kept that way.15
In this context the Westphalian spatial differentiation of “internal” and
“external” politics had no meaning.
Nevertheless, while there were established patterns of conduct, these
did not result in a set of pacific relations as was the case with the inner core
of the Chinese tributary system. Quite the contrary: these shared collective belief systems, these “mentalités collectives,” did not lead to stable and
peaceful relations within or between polities. The cultural schemas that
informed the political order created conditions that led to internecine
struggles, civil war, and conflict.
I, furthermore, argue that studying the political orders of Southeast
Asia allows us to isolate cultural factors as a key element of political order
given the absence of a dominant power.16 Underlying both the political
order of individual polities and the relations among them were shared
understandings of political authority and legitimate rule, reinforced by
rituals, the organization of society, architecture, and many other expressions of authority. Cultural schemata were manifested in material terms
and had “real” material consequences.
I begin this chapter with briefly justifying why we can categorize Southeast
Asia as a regional system and also discuss the particular methodological
difficulties with presenting a regional history. I then proceed to discuss the
collective belief systems and conceptual frameworks at the foundation of
these polities in the early modern period, before the increasing influence of
14
15
16
Wolters 1999, 114, fn. 26. Similarly, Benedict Anderson notes that in traditional Java,
foreign relations “implies a stress on the control of populations rather than of territory.”
Anderson 1990, 43.
Trocki 2009, 342–43.
From an informal methodological perspective, studying this region presents something of
a “most different case” design. The Southeast Asian region contrasts with regional
systems in which hegemonic actors created shared practices and norms. It also contrasts
with instrumentalist views in which actors deliberately designed certain rules of conduct
to facilitate their interactions.
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Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
external factors such as the arrival of Islam and European powers from
roughly the late fifteenth century on. The Southeast Asian understanding
of political authority will allow us to comprehend how these polities organized themselves, and differentiated interiority and exteriority. In sum, this
chapter depicts a shared ontology of what political order is and what it should
be. Southeast Asian conceptions were vastly different from Western-centric
understanding. In the next chapter, I examine how this particular belief
system influenced interpolity relations and how these Southeast Asian galactic polities responded to the arrival of the European colonial powers.
8.2
Methodological Challenges When Studying
Southeast Asia as a Region
8.2.1
Southeast Asia as a Region
Any designation of a given geographic area as a “region” involves a
deliberate analytic decision on the part of the observer. Even though we
commonly view geographic features as “natural” boundaries, the contours of what counts as a given region are open to social construction and
interpretation, particularly by those who see themselves either as a part of,
or distinct from, the region in question. What we wish to regard analytically as a “region” necessarily involves an assessment of the social and
cultural practices that give the material landscape its analytic coherence.
We must assess which practices, common understandings, histories, and
narratives define certain polities and areas as part of a region while
excluding others.
These questions are particularly salient for Southeast Asia. Whereas
seas and oceans sometimes might serve as proximate indicators of a
region’s boundaries, separating islands from each other and whatever
might be deemed the “mainland,” in Southeast Asia, by contrast, maritime interaction created a network of connected peoples and cultures. As
the findings of Roman coin attest, the Indian Ocean long served to link
Indonesia to distant markets and even the Mediterranean hubs of
commerce.17 Echoing Fernand Braudel’s epic, The Mediterranean and
the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, George Coedès regarded
the Southeast Asian seas as “a veritable Mediterranean formed by the
China Sea, the Gulf of Siam, and the Java Sea. This enclosed sea . . . has
always been a unifying factor rather than an obstacle for the peoples along
the rivers.”18
17
Lubis 1987, 27–29.
18
As quoted in Wolters 1999, 42.
The Galactic Polities of Southeast Asia
259
Trade networks and their corresponding patterns of communication
and demographic flows spread across a vast area, from India, through
Burma, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, and up to China. Some even see
shared historical experiences beyond this area and suggest that the geographic sphere of contact extended as far as eastern Africa and Middle
East.19 Moreover, given that the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asian
waters lacked a single dominant power,20 no significant geographic marker existed to define a clear western boundary.
Southeast Asia also lacks clear eastern boundaries. Indonesia alone
encompasses hundreds of ethnic groups over thousands of islands and
miles. Should New Guineans be considered as members of Southeast
Asian regional society to the same extent as, say, Cambodians or
Sumatrans?
Classifying the region by shared civilizational traits and heritage, as I do
in this chapter, is thus not straightforward. For some scholars, Vietnam is
an integral part of Southeast Asia given trade and diplomatic contacts
with its neighbors to the south and west. For others, however, Vietnam’s
distinctive Confucian legacy and connections to the Chinese tributary
system more appropriately place it within the East Asian orbit.
With these caveats in mind, I will nevertheless argue that Southeast
Asia constituted a distinct regional system. Following Oliver Wolters,
Stanley Tambiah, and other scholars, I submit that the polities in this
region exhibited considerable commonality in institutions and in their
logic of organization. They demonstrated a distinct style of intraregional
relations.21
This approach is not without its critics. Eminent scholars of South and
Southeast Asia such as Victor Lieberman and Sanjay Subrahmanyam
suggest that regional analyses miss the nuances and variation among
these polities.22 While every analysis of this type involves a trade-off
between discriminating patterns and local details, I nevertheless concur
with those scholars who argue that a regional focus provides valuable
insights and understandings. To analyze each kingdom as sui generis
belies the vast number of commercial and cultural interactions across
the mainland and maritime areas. Taken to its logical extreme denying
the relevance of regional and transregional dynamics would lead to the
19
20
21
22
Phillips and Sharman exemplify this cross regional focus and link to transoceanic history
by focusing on the Indian Ocean basin as their frame for analysis. Phillips and Sharman
2015.
Wolters 1999, 44, 45.
Indeed, while Wolters in the early 1980s still had reservations about speaking of a
“regional” history given the many local variations, by the late 1990s, his reservations
had diminished. Wolters 1999, 171.
See the discussion of the various positions on this issue in Acharya 2012, 7, 30–31.
260
Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
conclusion that interactions between the polities of the Malay-Indonesian
worlds and Brahmanic and Buddhist influences had no bearing on the
social, cultural, and political order of each individual polity. They would
have to be regarded as isolated islands in the literal sense of the word.
Thus, while recognizing the multiple inflections through which external
influences were mediated, I concur with Anthony Reid and Amitav
Acharya’s conclusions that any understanding must entail a study of the
patterns that might be found among these polities, which combined make
up the Southeast Asian region. Acharya convincingly argues that we
should study Southeast Asia as “a region-for-itself, constructed by the
collective political imagination of, and political interactions among, its
own inhabitants.”23
8.2.2
Other Methodological Challenges
As I discussed in Part I, the study of other regions and cultures is fraught
with epistemological and methodological quandaries. These problems
surface with particular intensity for early modern Southeast Asia. The
Southeast Asian region poses unique problems due, in part, to the lack of
indigenous written records prior to the early modern period. Only rare
original records survive in the form of old inscriptions. Indigenous
sources prior to 1500 were largely inscribed on bronze plates, which
were already becoming rare by the fourteenth century.24 Less durable
materials that replaced bronze, such as written texts on paper, deteriorated rapidly. In Indonesia, several iconic texts, such as the
Nagarakertagama (1365) and the Pararaton, survived but are only
known to us by later copies of the original.25 The former detailed the
reign of Hayam Wuruk (1350–89) when the Majapahit Empire was at its
peak. The latter is a short (thirty-two pages) embellished account of the
history of Majapahit’s kings, written sometime in the late fifteenth or
sixteenth century.
Early written historical accounts are thus rare and usually come from
Middle Eastern and Asian travelers, merchants, and diplomats. We
have, for example, some sparse Chinese accounts of the Khmer,
Mataram, Srivijaya, and other Southeast Asian kingdoms, with some
23
24
25
Acharya 2012, 4; see also 23–28. Donald McCloud concludes the same and notes how
historical commentaries of Chinese, Islamic, and South Asian chroniclers and travelers
already identified the region as a distinct and coherent entity. McCloud 1986, 8–16.
Reid 1993b, 10.
See also Reynolds 1995. Ricklefs is skeptical of the accuracy of local sources. He notes
C. C. Berg, who views local documents as untrustworthy as historical records. Instead,
local documents were meant to be supernatural documents, to be understood in terms of
political mythology. Ricklefs 1993, 18.
The Galactic Polities of Southeast Asia
261
26
from as early as the seventh century. Later written records largely
come from Western observers when they arrived in the sixteenth century. Portuguese and Spanish chroniclers, followed by the Dutch,
English and French, provide some useful information on these polities
from the late fifteenth century on.
But such written records must be treated with caution. Just like Islamic
rulers and their chroniclers, as well as Chinese court officials, contemporary observers of that period had reasons of their own to give specific
inflections to historical accounts. Observations of Southeast Asian practices by Islamic merchants or Chinese diplomats should not necessarily be
regarded as accurate representations. Just as we are prisoners of our
language, so, too, the chroniclers, merchants, and diplomats of early
modernity interpreted events with the vocabulary and conceptual frameworks available to them. We should not only be cautious of self-serving
Western analytic approaches or Eurocentric orientalism. The Chinese
observers of the Southeast Asian polities similarly applied their own
understanding of politics, bureaucracy, and hierarchy when they
described those polities in annals of the first millennium.27
Indeed, indigenous historians and scholars did little better when they
used their own eighteenth- and nineteenth-century vocabularies to
describe their past in terms of emergent states and nations. For example,
some of the powerful empires of the premodern era, such as the Srivijaya
Empire (c. 650–1300), were virtually unknown to indigenous scholars,
until Western scholars deciphered the inscriptions on their archaeological
findings. Local scholars and political elites then absorbed and utilized the
conclusions of Western scholarship to mobilize nationalist sentiments. All
such accounts are thus open to multiple interpretations. Even the very
translation of terms has implications. For example, the Sanskrit nagara
usually can be translated as “town,” but Geertz uses the Javanese variant
negara to denote the Balinese state.28 Historical records also vary across
the lifespan of the polity in question. For example, Wisseman Christie
notes that the evidence for the Javanese Mataram kingdom fluctuates.
While there are sparse accounts in Chinese records for the existence of the
kingdom in the late seventh century, the evidence for the ninth century is
26
27
28
These sources have biases of their own. For example, Chinese reports from the field were
written to align with Chinese views of a centralized Chinese state. Kulke 1986, 2.
Wolters 1999, 109.
Wisseman Christie observes that for Benedict Anderson the nagara (Javanese negara),
defined both the state and the capital. Wisseman Christie 1995, 239. Geertz describes
how the Sanskrit term in Indonesian can signify town, or capital, even civilization, when
juxtaposed with desa, meaning “village,” “dependency,” or “governed area.” Geertz
1980, 4. Noorduyn notes that the indigenous old texts are open to multiple interpretations, which inevitably require deep philological examination. Noorduyn 1978, 258.
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Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
far more conclusive.29 Furthermore, cultural and religious frameworks
were constantly renegotiated and reinterpreted based on local conditions
and new events.
How might we navigate this complexity? First, the Southeast Asian
historical record must be deduced from multiple sources, such as epigrams, architecture, and epic poems. Triangulation among sources and
across fields is essential to deduce particular configurations and to illuminate this obscure past from different angles. Analyzing the tapestry of
conceptual frameworks that informed action and organization thus
requires an interdisciplinary approach.30 In order to piece together how
individuals saw their world and how they organized their political community we must turn to analyses by archaeologists, sociologists, historians, and political scientists. We should inspect how authority and order
manifested themselves in material life. Archaeological evidence can complement written records, insofar as they exist. We might ask how temple
and palace construction reflected cosmological views, and search for the
parallelisms between doctrine and political institutions. To echo Oliver
Wolters, “the study of earlier Southeast Asian history is everyone’s
business.”31
Second, given the scarcity of indigenous records, one often must rely on
the accounts by travelers, emissaries, and merchants from the Orient and
the West. Even with potential pitfalls, these accounts can still provide
useful evidence, as Leonard Andaya suggests. Although Andaya appreciates the study of local sources, insofar as they are available, he regards as
regrettable the “attitude that European documents are somehow less
legitimate than indigenous records in reconstructing the Southeast
Asian past.”32
Third, although one must be mindful of preexisting analytic biases any
scholarly approach requires some conceptual framework to guide the
bewildering array of evidence or what is to count as evidence in the first
place.33 Even when rejecting the notion of “models,” historians, anthropologists, and others inevitably bring their own analytic ordering to the
29
30
31
32
33
Wisseman Christie 1995, 272, 275. But difficulties abound. Noorduyn concludes that
there are few reliable written sources (epigraphs and inscriptions) on the powerful Javacentered Majapahit Empire prior to the fifteenth century. Noorduyn 1978, 209, 244.
Acharya makes the same point. Acharya 2012, 24.
Wolters 1999, 13; Acharya 2012, 13 and chapter 3.
Andaya 1993a, 7, 249. Andaya argues that some of the European commentaries, for
example, those regarding the Moluccan islands, were driven by the Europeans’ genuine
interest to understand the polities they encountered. Moreover, the Europeans had to
rely on the local populations’ oral histories, which, in the absence of written local sources,
presented a substitute for an indigenous account.
I thus disagree with Wisseman Christie’s suggestion that we avoid models altogether.
Wisseman Christie 1995, 237.
The Galactic Polities of Southeast Asia
263
evidence at hand. Craig Reynolds thus rightfully suggests that any dismissal of models “presumes historians can deal with epigraphic evidence
without any recourse to word-pictures of the social entities that produced
the epigraphy.”34 In a similar vein, Oliver Wolters speaks of the need for
“making sense,” by which he means “the process of understanding new
things in the light of existing knowledge by spotting similarities.”35
By doing so, diverse approaches may reveal similarities from multiple
perspectives. Clifford Geertz’s cultural perspective complements the
views of Heine-Geldern, Wolters, Tambiah, and others who emphasize
the performative and ritualistic aspects of authority. Ritual serves to
integrate real and imagined worlds.36 In like manner sociologists emphasize the role of “repertoires” and “taken-for-granted” fields of action.37
Political science illuminates the distinctiveness of this regional order by
contrasting it with other patterns outside Southeast Asia, as well highlighting how it diverges from our common understandings of interaction,
hierarchy, and political order.
8.3
Collective Belief Systems in Southeast Asia
The Southeast Asian polities in this region shared Brahmanic and Buddhist
conceptions of what constituted authority, who could claim authority, and
how such authority might be exercised. In particular, the desire to order the
material world according to religious and cosmological beliefs motivated
political and social organization.38 Thus, throughout the Southeast Asian
region a parallelism existed between the shared imaginary and the material.
These indigenous patterns remained influential even with the gradual
encroachment and incorporation of the Europe-centric world order.
Similarly, other outside influences, such as the gradual spread of Islam
from the fifteenth century on, were translated and transformed through
interactions with the indigenous belief systems and their corresponding
social and political arrangements.39
34
36
37
38
39
Reynolds 1995, 429 35 Wolters 1999, 140.
“In a ritual, the world as lived and the world as imagined, fused under the agency of a
single set of symbolic forms, turn out to be the same worlds.” Geertz 1973, 113. Reynolds
notes the affinities between Geertz’s work on the “Negara” state and the mandala models
advanced by Tambiah, Wolters, and others. Reynolds 1995.
DiMaggio and Powell 1983, 149, fn. 5.
This was hardly unique to the Southeast Asian region. In medieval Europe as well, people
sought to make the material world homologous with the ordering of the spiritual world;
see Duby 1980; and Le Goff 1988. As discussed in the earlier chapters, East Asian beliefs
likewise were permeated with particular cosmological views that influenced the political
order.
On monotheistic influences, particularly Islam and Christianity, following the fifteenth
century, see Reid 1993a.
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Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
Broad similarities can thus be found among Southeast Asian polities,
both in terms of organization and the various means by which authority
was made manifest, even if local variations altered the general pattern.40
Common myths and ur-narratives were duplicated and represented in
political and social arrangements throughout Southeast Asia. The
mentalité collective manifested itself materially through architecture, political alliances, state administration, and ritual performance. Collective
beliefs defined the political community.41
8.3.1
Hindu and Buddhist Cosmology and the Mandala Schematic
While Hindu and Buddhist foundational narratives differ, they also share
key elements. Commonalities exist although there are many variations
across the Brahmanic and Buddhist schools. In Brahmanic doctrine, the
world consists of a circular continent, Jambudvipa, surrounded by seven
ring-shaped oceans and seven ring-shaped lands. Mount Meru, where the
gods reside and around which sun, moon, and stars revolve, sits at the
center of Jambudvipa. In Buddhist doctrine as well, Mount Meru lies at
the center with seven mountain ranges and seven rings of ocean surrounding it. Beyond the last mountain range there is an ocean with four continents. The southern continent is Jambudvipa, where people reside.
Mount Meru itself has several, usually three, heavenly realms, with the
lowest realm consisting of four great kings who guard the world. Thirtythree gods, with Indra as the supreme god, occupy the higher realm.42
The particular visions of cosmological order combined with numerology
to influence the social and political order throughout Southeast Asia.
Collective imagination drove material manifestation. Shared foundational
elements spread through the Indianization of Southeast Asia – although to
40
41
42
See Tambiah 2013; Gyallay-Pap 2007; Lieberman 1987; Andaya 1993b; van Fraassen
1992.
While I share Amitav Acharya’s argument that regional identity involves a process of
imagination and construction, my approach differs from his. I focus on the long-term
influences of collective identity, as distinct from conscious instrumental designs such as
those in contemporary regional organizations, for example, the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN). Collective identity in this sense is less self-conscious and less
purposeful, but rather, is the result of a particular paradigmatic view, the
“Weltanschauung” of a particular people. Moreover, Acharya’s analysis is largely
oriented to illuminate the post-1945 period, while my objective is to illuminate the
terms of interaction in the encounter between non-European systems and the
Westphalian powers.
See particularly Heine-Geldern 1942, 16–17. Also see Alkire 1972, 485; Lubis 1987, 23.
Various cosmographies were possible with different numerologies of three, four or seven
parts. In early cosmographies, the world consists of four continents, later, of seven, which
reappear in Buddhist doctrine as four continents and seven mountain ranges. Mabbett
1983.
The Galactic Polities of Southeast Asia
265
Figure 8.1 Basic mandala design.
a far lesser extent in Vietnam, which remained heavily influenced by
Confucianism. Sanskrit was considered a sacred language used in a discourse of power and knowledge across the region, what Sheldon Pollack
denoted as “Sanskrit cosmopolitanism.”43 Wolters thus regards early modern Southeast Asia as a Hindu world.
The mandala schematic provided a representation of Buddhist and
Hindu cosmology. Just as cosmic oceans and mountains surrounded the
spiritual center, Mount Meru, the mandala scheme displayed a critical
center. “According to a common Indo-Tibetan tradition, the mandala is
composed of two elements: a core (manda) and a container or enclosing
element (la).”44 The mandala schema thus presented the observer with a
cosmic diagram, which consisted of one or more circular forms that could
be of increasing complexity (see Figure 8.1).
The mandala schematic was not conceived as two-dimensional. The
very complexity of the mandala designs, which were used in painting as
well as in architectural plans, meant to evoke a three-dimensional perspective. The core of the circle connected vertically with the spiritual
world above. Just as Mount Meru evinced various realms from the lowest
to the highest level, where the god Indra resided, the mandala suggested a
two-dimensional radiation from the spiritual center outward, as well as a
43
Day 2002, 93–94; Wolters 1999, 47, 110.
44
Tambiah 2013, 503.
266
Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
three-dimensional connection from the mundane to the spiritual world
above.45
The mandala schematic can be traced in various meanings and settings.
Sonit Bafna suggests that it has at least five different conceptual usages.
First, it can function as a ritualistic geometric design to symbolize the
universe, as well as an aid to meditation. Second, it can denote “a circle,
diagram, any circular circumscribed area, but it is also used for square
yantras [mythical diagrams].” In a third use, it might simply denote a
circle or globe. Fourth, it might describe a territory, a circle of friends, or a
group. Finally, Bafna notes that in Kautilya’s Arthashastra it specifically
refers to a model for political alliances. For Wolters, the mandala can be
viewed as a set of overlapping networks, or “circles of kings,” with superimposed spheres of authority claims. Kern argues that the term “mandala” refers to a circle or community. In studying an old Javanese stone
inscription dating from 1273, he notes that it refers to a country that has
an independent ruler.46
The concentric schematic of the Hindu-Buddhist universe mixed with
other images that had spiritual significance. In the process, Hindu and
Buddhist conceptions that were primarily concentric in imagery blended
with, and were transformed into, square depictions along with specific
numerical symbolism.
As in many other religions, the four cardinal points played an important
role in spiritual imagination. Consequently, C. T. Bertling argues that
across history and many cultures, the number 4, or multiples thereof, has
had particular symbolic significance.47 The central node at the center of
the four directions conveyed particular transcendent meaning.
Hindu and Buddhist beliefs also attached religious and spiritual significance to other numbers. The number 2 was important for its symbolism of balance, the dualism of good and evil, heaven and earth. The
number 3 derived its importance from the three realms within Buddhist
cosmology: the supreme god Indra, his four subdeities, and his twentyeight lords. Added together, the latter two categories also signified the
relevance of the number 32: Indra’s lesser lords and deities. With Indra
himself included, the number 33 also acquired religious-cosmic meaning.
45
46
47
Dellios notes that the term was introduced by Western scholars in the twentieth century
to denote Southeast Asian political formations and to distinguish these formations from
conventional understandings of the term “state.” Although imbued with variant names in
different versions, the main design scheme remains the same. Dellios 2003.
Bafna 2000, 44. Similarly, Chutintaranond describes multiple meanings. Chutintaranond
1990, 89. Also see Wolters 1999, 27; Kern 1905, 662.
We might in this context also reflect on European medieval imagery that placed Jerusalem
at the center of the world. Bertling 1954, 93, 94, 98, 113.
The Galactic Polities of Southeast Asia
267
As noted, the number 4 signified the cardinal points – the plane of
existence, and recurred in Hindu-Buddhist religious accounts of the
spiritual and human worlds. From this the number 5 derived significance
by including the center within the horizontal plane together within the
four quadrants. The midpoint signified Mount Meru as the center of the
spiritual world. In the human world, the center occupied by the ruler
performed the equivalent role.48 Other relevant numerical configurations, such as 8 and 9 (and their multiples 64, 81), derived from these
bases.49 Shorto notes that the importance of particular numerical organization can be captured by the formula: 2n + 1. Hence we see the
importance of 3, 5, 9, 17, and 33, in addition to the quadripartite arrangement and quincunx.50
William Alkire argues that the Hindu and Buddhist cosmological
representations of the universe blended with earlier Micronesian cosmological views related to astronomical observations for navigational purposes. As in the Hindu-Buddhist synthesis, because the ruler would
typically face east – the direction of sunrise, the right (south) was considered good, with the left (north) being less auspicious. The numerical
Micronesian “compass” and the numerical patterns in Hindu-Buddhist
cosmology also resembled each other. Alkire thus suggests that Hindu
and Buddhist cosmology might even have been derivative of an older
indigenous base that can be traced to Austronesian views.51
Whatever the origins of this cosmology, it conceived of the ordered
universe as a symmetrical, patterned structure that could be captured by
either a circular or square imagery. Artistically and graphically, the circular
mandala was thus often represented within a square, which usually had
48
49
50
51
The numerical logic of organization is also captured by the Javanese term Mantjapat,
meaning “five-four,” and mantja-lima (five-five). Mantjapat denoted the king with the
council of the king’s ministers, a council of four, the inner circle. Mantja-lima referred to
a group of eight sitting in two circles around the king. Shorto 2002, 197–98. De Josselin
de Jong also notes the how the Javanese ruler sits “surrounded by four, or concentric
circles of each four, officials. The eight-nine grouping is then called mantja-lima.” De
Josselin de Jong 1952, 150fn.
Tambiah 1976, 109; see fn. 6 in particular. He regards this cosmological scheme as “a
scheme of activation” (111). Parenthetically, we might note that the number 5 also
appears with particular significance in Chinese cosmology. Yuan 2014, 325–36.
Shorto 2002, 195; Bertling 1954, 104, fn. 33.
The Micronesians divided the night sky into a square grid, with specific stars positioned
at the edge of rectangles to form the endpoints of gridlines. These together created
twenty-four major and four minor points on the rectangular compass. The mid-star
(Altair) and the four corners made up by other stars formed the key to the compass.
Alkire further notes that various rituals, arithmetic counting techniques, and the measurement of time exhibited the quadripartite division (and multiples thereof). Alkire
1972, 486, 489–92. Van Fraassen notes that Andaya similarly suggests a similarity
between Moluccan society and Austronesian culture, with Austronesian culture perhaps
more influential in Maluku than Indian or Islamic ideas. Van Fraassen 1994.
268
Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
four openings or gates. The circular pattern could be repeated infinitely,
and, in some variations, replaced altogether by a set of squares. These
variants might create a highly complex pattern, as in Tibetan Buddhist
artistic design, but the model was always based on a center that radiated
outward with repeated patterns of four, or multiples of four, surrounding it.
Cosmological perspectives thus aligned with specific numerical
patterns.52 Throughout Southeast Asia, and arguably in some parts of
East Asia, architecture, art, and political organization were intended to
reveal such beliefs and numerical patterns. In addition to the influence of
Hindu-Buddhist cosmology (as argued by Heine-Geldern and others),
astronomical observations, the importance of orientation to the cardinal
points, and earlier clan-based social organization might also have contributed to this imagination.53 But although multiple influences can be
suggested, it is clear that Hindu-Buddhist cosmology and religious views
played a key role. The desire to replicate this cosmological order in the
material world influenced all aspects of society and politics.
8.3.2
The King as Pivot of the Polity: From Cosmological Views
to Material Manifestation
How was this spiritual perspective experienced in everyday life? More
specifically, how did such views manifest themselves in a material sense
and influence the social and political order?
Stanley Tambiah has presented some of the most compelling arguments to demonstrate the connections between cosmological perspectives and material and cultural life. Tambiah has shown how the two
realms are inextricably linked by advocating a “totalizing perspective”
that privileges neither the material nor the cultural.
Many other scholars agree with Tambiah’s views by showing how
temples, palaces, and urban design replicated the imagery of the sacred
mandala configuration. The capital, with its ideal location at the center of
the kingdom, represented Mount Meru and its position as the magical
center of the universe. The capital itself also reflected the cosmological
structure. Within the capital, preferably at the center, a high point such as
a hill, or a towering temple or palace, stood in for Mount Meru.54 The
52
53
54
More generally, Dumézil has argued that throughout Indo-European civilizations the
tripartite cognitive scheme holds specific significance. Gonda 1974.
See for a discussion of possible sources Shorto 2002, 203. Also see Alkire 1972; and
Bertling 1954.
Heine-Geldern notes that similar patterns occurred throughout the Khmer kingdom,
Bali, and Burma. Heine-Geldern 1942, 16–18; see also De Josselin de Jong 1952, 155–
56. Frank Reynolds argues that the Meru cosmography still operates in contemporary
Thailand: “Thus the Phukaothong or Golden Mount . . . serves as a permanent
The Galactic Polities of Southeast Asia
269
ideal kingdom thus consisted of a king who ruled from the critical center
over a circle of subordinate princes. The administrative layout of the
kingdom reflected this desired ideal. “Mount Meru’s massive presence,
stabilizing the world, is explicitly likened to the throne and power of the
Chakravartin, who makes the wheel of Righteousness to revolve round
that center.”55
The center of the polity served as the conduit between two realms, the
axis mundi, the center connecting heaven and earth.56 Consequently, by
his very actions, the king epitomized the analogue of the supreme deity.
He was the Chakravartin, the world ruler who had no equal. He did not
merely rule the world but indeed “made” the world. Without the ruler,
chaos, devoid of form and reason, would result.57 “Reality was achieved
through the imitation of a celestial archetype by giving material expression to that parallelism between macrocosmos and microcosmos without
which there could be no prosperity in the world of men.”58
In re-creating and paralleling the cosmic order, the ruler signifies and
legitimizes his position as the creator of order out of mythical chaos.
Architectural designs of temples and palaces, with the two often synonymous, further reinforced this imagery. Throughout Southeast Asia, the
organization of space, the creation of temples, and the architectural
patterns demonstrated the ruler’s status as a sacred manifestation of the
deity.59
55
56
57
58
representation of Mt. Meru in its role as the central axis of the present Thai kingdom.”
Reynolds 1978, 201.
Mus 1964, 441. As Winichakul describes as well, “he was the center of a microcosm
located in a capital city, but whose genealogy of power could be traced back to origins in
Jambudipa, the mythological realm which was identified with modern India.”
Winichakul 2000, 533. In legendary foundation myths, the capital city was designed by
the supreme deity Indra. Shorto 2002, 191. Aung-Thwin and Aung-Thwin describe the
prevalence of the exemplary centers, the capital cities, in the various dynasties in the
history of Myanmar. Aung-Thwin and Aung-Thwin 2012, 134.
Geertz thus refers to the creation of a negara, “a cosmologically based exemplary state.”
Geertz 1980, 37. Similarly, Tambiah notes, “In this scheme the king as wielder of dharma
(the moral law), as the chakravartin (universal emperor) and bodhisattva (buddha-tobe), was seen as the pivot of the polity and as the mediating link between the upper
regions of the cosmos, composed of the gods and their heavens, and the lower plane of
humans and lesser beings.” Tambiah 2013, 505. See also Dellios 2003, 9. Variations of
this recurrent pattern of creating and re-creating the “axis mundi” appear in many
cultures and across time; see Eliade 1959.
In Hinduism, there is a close relationship between the king and Vishnu. “By identifying
himself with Vis[h]nu the king is able to conquer the worlds. The ruler is even said to
consist of a ‘portion’ of Vis[h]nu . . . Vis[h]nu, when not represented in the form of one of
his avatars, was usually depicted in Khmer art as a world sovereign or cakravartin.” Lavy
2003, 33. See also Mabbett: the ruler is “cakravartin, ‘wheel turner’ – the ideal world
emperor who by his karma sets in motion all the laws by which the world is governed.”
Mabbett 1983, 80.
Weatley 1969, 9–10. 59 Bertling 1954, 112.
270
Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
The Hindu basis for these architectural designs is clear. Hilde Link notes
that the mandala was designed with the intention to make the macrocosmic order visible. The mandala functioned as a means to bound space
and time. “Each temple is meant to be a representation of the cosmos in all
its parts, making the incomprehensible, comprehensible.”60 Architectural
designs consequently have a central point with the number 4 or 9 as their
mathematical base (and multiples thereof). Rosita Dellios likewise demonstrates the multidimensional representation of the mandala configuration
in graphic art and architecture, as, for example, in the stupas, as well as in
monumental temples and palaces.61
Such buildings were often deliberately multistoried to exemplify the
multitiered spiritual realm. The vertical axis of the palace-temple created
the bridge between the profane, material authority of the king, and the
spiritual world of the sacred realm. The architecture of the Angkor complex in Cambodia and Borobudur in Indonesia, as well as many other
significant centers, followed these specific patterns (see Figure 8.2).62
As demonstrated in the Khmer kingdom of Angkor, conformity between
architectural design and epigraphy made clear the symbolism of temples,
which where explicitly linked to Mount Meru. For example, the temple of
Phnom (hill) Bakheng, constructed with five levels, lies at the center of one
of the earlier Khmer capitals, Yasodharpura. The summit of the temple has
a central tower, and four other surrounding towers form the corners of a
square. In a similar fashion, the western gate of Angkor Thom depicts
Mount Meru with the city of the god Indra at the summit guarded by four
kings. The construction of Angkor Wat likewise evokes the image of Mount
Meru and concentric chains of mountains surrounded by oceans.63
60
61
62
63
“Jeder Tempel sei in allen seinen Teilen ein Abbild des Kosmos, sie würden UnBegreifliches be-greifbar machen.” Link 1993, 201. Link follows Kramrish, who in her
work on the Hindu temple observed the mathematical basis of Indian temple architecture
with 64 and 81 as foundational numbers, i.e., multiples of 4 and 9. Link 1993, 194–95.
Bertling describes the Mandala as an archetypical form that influenced monumental
building and indeed religious and philosophical thought. Bertling 1954, 108. Bafna
argues that the mandala configuration did not provide a geometric blueprint but was
used as a loose regulatory device to guide the construction of sacred buildings. Bafna
2000, 37, 42, 43.
Dellios 2003, 4, 7.
The Indonesian complex of Borobudur alone has been the subject of hundreds of
publications. Mabbett 1983, 69, 73–76. Andrea Acri notes that the builders aimed to
link the microcosmos with the macrocosmos by numerical correspondence, and by the
mandala design. She disagrees, however, with some accounts that suggest that the
building encodes highly sophisticated scientific geographic and astronomical knowledge.
Acri 2011, 316, 319.
Zéphir 1995, 8, 13, 15. On the Angkor complex and the influence of Hindu cosmological
views, see Wheatley 1971, 432–39; Day similarly notes how complex numerical symbolism is represented throughout the construction of Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat captures
cosmology as sacred space and time. Day 2002, 95–96. On the sacrality and function of
The Galactic Polities of Southeast Asia
271
Figure 8.2 Symbolism and layout of Angkor Wat. By courtesy of David
Raezer, Approach Guides (www.approachguides.com).
Beyond the mainland, Mochtar Lubis notes how similar patterns
occurred in Java and Malaya and were repeated at multiple levels of
organization.
This harmonious arrangement should also be reflected in the microcosmos, so
that it could be in harmony with the macrocosmos. In the Hindu-Javanese society
later, the same pattern is reflected in the keratin at the centre, where the king, the
bearer of wahya [god given power] rules, and is surrounded by four ministries and
other authorities from the four points of the compass. This system seeps down to
the clusters of the old Javanese villages, with one village at the centre and four
others around it forming a larger unit of mutual-help villages in regulating the
water system . . . and other things of common interest.64
64
Northern Thai cities, see Swearer 1987. (“Angkor” is derivative of the Sanskrit nagara,
“city.”)
Lubis 1987, 23. Clifford Geertz’s analysis of Bali reveals a similar pattern. Bali is
particularly interesting since the influences of Islam and Dutch expansion were slight,
and thus the Balinese conception of political order in Geertz’s view reveals a pattern that
was common throughout many Indonesian islands before Islam arrived, as well as in
272
Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
Vassals to the king would in turn duplicate these patterns in their
regional centers, palaces, and temples, thereby further re-creating and
reinforcing the material reflection of the shared cosmological understanding. Lesser vassals to those higher lords would do the same. This process
of repetitive duplication forged the link between the manifestation of
power and the legitimation of authority.
We can interpret these actions as the ruler symbolically making the
world habitable. In turn, the ruler legitimizes his rule by ordering the
material world by his design of temples, the palace, and the royal city. He
is the “world creator.” Prophesies thus did not foretell events that were
about to happen; rather, events happened because they were foretold.65
Rulers were not beyond using Hindu and Buddhist religious beliefs
instrumentally, nor were they restricted to only referring to the mandala
system. In the early Khmer Empire, in the seventh century, the kings of
Northern Cambodia invoked various Indian deities to unite the North,
where Shiva was worshiped, and the South, where Vishnu was popular.
The kings invoked Hindu art forms and deities, and even blended Indian
deities into a hybrid, to manifest their power visually. Paul Lavy notes that
these early Khmer principalities were likely organized on mandala patterns, but that rulers were constantly attuned to how to best represent
their authority. Diverse artistic and architectural representations thus
“served as divine analogues for the concentration of royal power – a
power that was legitimated, sanctified, and maintained through this
very association with the gods.”66 However, although not devoid of
strategic calculations, rulers made such instrumental choices against a
shared repertoire of meanings and symbols.
Rulers explicitly linked their authority to the divine and availed themselves
of symbolic representation by erecting monuments. Udayadityavarman II,
the ruler of Angkor from 1050 to 1066, thus had a linga (a phallic stone
representation of Shiva) erected and inscribed with the text, “because he was
aware that the centre of the universe was distinguished by Meru, he considered it appropriate that there should be a Meru in the centre of his own
capital.”67 What held true in Angkor held throughout multiple polities in
Southeast Asia. “Kingship, with its dependent officialdom, was thus built
above the plane of cleavage, in a kind of higher world of the gods, symbolized,
with a great variety of myths and images, by the sacred City, the temples and
the palace.”68
65
68
Cambodia, Thailand, and Burma. These polities held to the “doctrine of the exemplary
center . . . the theory that the court and capital are at once a microcosm of the supernatural order.” Geertz 1980, 13; see also 9.
Heine-Geldern 1942, 25. 66 Lavy 2003, 37; see also 31. 67 Mabbett 1983, 82.
Mus 1964, 452.
The Galactic Polities of Southeast Asia
273
In short, such collective beliefs did not exist as abstract doctrine but
were made manifest in everyday life at multiple levels and by various
means. The capital and the palace at its center visibly demonstrated
how the material world could reflect the spiritual. The sacred mandala
repeated itself in architecture, urban design, and art. Trying to distinguish
“religious” from “secular” practices would be to superimpose our familiar
categories. For peoples and rulers of the Southeast Asian region, sacred
and secular were inseparably fused.69
8.4
The Galactic Empire: From Collective Imagination
to Political Order
The king, his palace, his central shrine, and his capital city therefore
belong to the same cycle of equivalences as does Meru. In a sense, the
ruler is Meru. The center of the kingdom . . . is the place where Meru
rises, and there should be four main roads radiating from it to the
cardinal points to materialize the cosmographic symmetry of Meru.70
In practical administrative terms, this implied that kingdoms tended to be
organized with four inner circle satellites and usually another four beyond
those. Thus, the spatial ordering of center and vassals tended to establish
five or nine administrative units. As replications of the center, these units
each had their own core and satellite constellations. This arrangement
appeared at the level of the kingdom, but also, in less complex form, at the
local level.71
A similar spatial arrangement emerges in Kautilya’s Arthashastra. For
scholars in the social sciences, particularly in international relations,
Kautilya’s work has provided an entry point for understanding Indian
philosophical and cosmological views and political practice.72 Kautilya’s
work is influential partly because Arthashastra is the only surviving arthashastric work. The Arthashastra text has been regarded as a treatise on
statecraft, military strategy, and economics. Kautilya was likely the chief
minister of Chandragupta (ruled c. 322/321–298 BCE), the founder of
69
70
71
Reynolds notes that some of the critics of the mandala as a model of state formation, such
as Jan Wisseman Christie and Herman Kulke, miss the point. They critique the concept
either because they are reluctant to use models in general (Christie) or because they find
little evidence that the term was used by ruling elites. Instead, it should be understood as a
hermeneutic aid to understand practices rather than as “a thing whose existence has to be
proved beyond the shadow of a doubt.” Reynolds 1995, 427.
Mabbett 1983, 80. Geertz holds the same view and is worth quoting at length, revealing
the material manifestation of cosmological views. “In the Hindu period, the king’s castle
comprehended virtually the entire town. A squared-off ‘heavenly city’ constructed
according to the ideas of Indic metaphysics, it was more than a locus of power; it was a
synoptic paradigm of the ontological shape of existence.” Geertz 1973, 222.
Tambiah 2013, 503–4. 72 Boesche 2003.
274
Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
the Mauryan dynasty and the grandfather of Asoka, who extended the
Mauryan Empire (c. 322–187 BCE) to its furthest extent.73 Kautilya’s
work has alternatively been viewed as a hyperrealist treatise or as a counsel
for wise and good leadership. Max Weber popularized the view of
Kautilya’s Arthashastra as “a really radical ‘Machiavellianism’ . . . in contrast with his document Machiavelli’s Principe is harmless.”74
Kautilya’s Arthashastra stressed the mandala scheme as the most desirable configuration for establishing sound political order in a polity. Just as
authority radiated out from the center, the realm’s alliance system should
reflect a pattern of concentric circles. Kautilya added the advice that
potential challengers to the center should be held in the innermost circle,
with allies in the circle beyond that. All in all, Kautilya distinguished
twelve variations of status.75
Kautilya’s work and its impact, however, are not straightforward. The
Arthashastric texts are elements of a wider corpus. Within this body of
religious and philosophical texts, we might distinguish dharma as morality, artha as the control of material and human resources, and kama as
enjoyment of personal desires. Hence, the Dharmashastra, Arthashastra,
and Kamasutra were to be viewed in hierarchical order, with dharma as the
most significant.
Moreover, the interpretation of his work has been biased. While there is
no doubt an instrumental and realist side to Kautilya, the Arthashastra
also contains provisions for public goods that the ruler should supply. The
impact of the Arthashastra should also not be overstated; arguably,
Asoka’s edicts were a reaction to, and rejection of, the Machiavellian
mores of the Arthashastra. Dharmashastric mores thus stood in contrast
to the arthashastric precepts.76
However we interpret Kautilya’s work, it still stands as an early example
of the impact of cosmological beliefs on political order. These Brahmanic
73
74
75
76
Although attributed to Kautilya, the dating of the Arthashastra is far from certain, with
debates over its composition for anytime between 300 BCE and 300 CE. Tambiah
1976, 27.
Weber 1946, 123–24. For a similar reading of Kautilya as an offensive realist, see
Boesche. He argues that for Kautilya, allies are determined by “the so-called Mandala
theory of foreign policy, in which immediate neighbors are considered as enemies, but
any state on the other side of a neighboring state is regarded as an ally, or, the enemy of my
enemy is my friend.” Boesche 2003, 18. In Boesche’s rendition, Kautilya thus easily fits
with a modern vocabulary of strategic calculation, ruthlessness and conquest. He notes
the mandala concept but does not discuss its significance, nor does he delve into
Kautilya’s exposition on what counts as just rule.
Chutintaranond 1990, 89; Dellios 2003, 4. The Arthashastra was one of the core Indian
treatises that were widely known and studied throughout Southeast Asia, and rulers
would justify some of their decisions by referring to the text, to justify their actions as
universal truths. Wolters 1999, 49.
Tambiah 1976, 23, 27–31, 57.
The Galactic Polities of Southeast Asia
275
and Buddhist cosmological beliefs influenced political developments in
India and Southeast Asia in the subsequent centuries. Cosmological
beliefs defined perfect rule, and Asoka epitomized the perfect king.
“The Buddha is par excellence the Mahapurusa [the total man]; yet his
real role in the cosmogonic process is to reveal it, not to be part of it. But
this makes all the more revealing the fact that virtuous kings should
appear as a projection of the same incomparable perfection.”77
Romalia Thapar submits that the Asoka’s Mauryan Empire reflected
Hindu cosmological principles. The polity was divided into four provinces and four capitals in which “bureaucracy was centralized, with the
ruler as the key figure, and all loyalty was directed to the person of the
king.”78 Tambiah argues the polity had a “kind of galaxy-type structure
with lesser political replicas revolving around the central entity and in
perpetual motion of fission or incorporation.”79
The mandala configuration appears in numerous Southeast Asian polities: the Champa Empire of the eleventh century (roughly corresponding
with South Vietnam); the Ayutthaya kingdom (c. fourteenth to eighteenth
centuries located in contemporary Thailand); the Khmer Empire (c. ninth
to fifteenth centuries, Cambodia today); the Indonesian empires of
Srivijaya (c. seventh to fourteenth centuries) and the Majapahit kingdom
(c. thirteenth to fifteenth centuries), and others all evinced such patterns.80
The material expression had several implications for political order. First,
the mandala configuration articulated political authority as a set of personal
ties between the ruler and lesser lords rather than as authority defined by
territorial boundaries. Second, it influenced how the polity structured these
personal ties in the form of specific spatial and organizational logic.81
77
79
80
81
Mus 1964, 441; Tambiah 1976, chapter 5. 78 Thapar 1966, 89.
Tambiah 1976, 70.
Wolters lists mandala polities in what are today Thailand, Cambodia, the Philippines,
and Indonesia, with Burma and Laos showing subregional systems. Wolters 1999, 28,
31–36. Manguin argues that Sumatran Srivijaya around the seventh century was organized around the Mandala configuration. Manguin 2000, 161–62. For the argument that
the Javanese Majapahit empire constituted a mandala-type system, see Manggala 2013.
Kern suggests that the Coromandel on the Indian coast etymologically originates from
Cola-mandala. Similarly, “Yawadwipa-mandala” denotes the “sovereign empire of
Yawa” (Java) or “the island of Java in its entirety.” Kern 1905, 662. Zakharov disagrees
that Srivijaya (Sriwijaya) should be regarded as a mandala. However, he notes that the
polity was constructed around personal bonds rather than territorial or formal connections. This resembles in some respects the personal ties found in a mandala political
configuration as the basis for organization. Moreover, Zakharov notes that the ruler of
Sriwijaya is referred to as “Lord of the Mountain.” This would suggest a reference to
Mount Meru. Zakharov 2009, 3–4, 9. Carl Trocki notes that the mandala configuration
occurs in many Southeast Asian polities from the eighth to the nineteenth centuries.
Trocki 2009, 340. Acharya likewise lists mandala type polities on the mainland as well as
the island empires. Acharya 2012, 8.
Wolters 1999, 141.
276
Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
Political administration could thus be articulated in circular form, the rajala
mandala, but also in a geometric pattern of squares.
This much can be said: all along the migratory routes, from South China through
the basins of the Irrawaddy [Burma] and Menam [Thailand] to Indonesia, we find
universe and state intermittently conceptualized in terms of a cruciform structure
of five points, the “five regions” of China and “sacred five” of Java.82
Around the early eighteenth century, well after the arrival of the first
Europeans, the later Mataram kingdom (sultanate) of Central Java still
consisted of five units organized geometrically as a center unit and four
quadrants.83 The Negri Sembilan polity (literally the nine villages or units),
which emerged under Sumatran influences in western Malaya in the fifteenth
century, consisted of a core and two sets of four (see Figures 8.3 and 8.4).
N
Mantjanegara (Outer Region)
W
E
West
West
Negari Ageng
(Core Region)
East
East
Pasisir (Outer Region)
S
NW
N
W
SW
NE
E
S
SE
Figure 8.3 The Mataram state. (upper left) The mantjapat. (upper
right) The Mataram state – a five-unit system. (lower left) Nine-unit
system, showing a radical pattern. (lower right) The king’s council,
showing two concentric circles. From Tambiah 1976, 105–6.
82
83
Shorto 2002, 205.
The old Mataram kingdom or Medang kingdom existed roughly from the eighth to tenth
centuries. The later Mataram kingdom, the sultanate, existed between the sixteenth and
eighteenth centuries. Lubis 1987, 37, 77.
The Galactic Polities of Southeast Asia
277
6
2
5 1
9
3
7
4
1 = Sri Menanti – capital
2 = Ulu Muar
3 = Djempol
4 = Gunnung verandahs
Pasir
5 = Teratji
6 = Djelebu
7 = Djohol
major
8 = Rembau
districts
9 = SungaiUdjong
D = District
S = Serambi (verandah)
8
D
D
S
S
S
Sri Menanti
S
D
D
Figure 8.4 The Negri Sembilan (nine villages) now forms one of the
provinces of Malaysia, but it retained its nine-unit partition until the late
twentieth century. From Tambiah 1976, 105–6.
This design not only occurred at the state level but recurred at the
micro level as well. In Indonesia, the four or five scheme appears
commonly in the arrangement of four settlements around a central
village.84 Collective imagination was thus not the province of ruling
elites alone.
There is a clear connection between the mandala configuration of
Southeast Asian polities and cosmological understandings of correct
order and right rule. In the spiritual realm, four great kings ruled the
lower realm of Mount Meru. Similarly, the realms of the empire should be
84
See De Josselin de Jong 1952, 150.
278
Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
organized along four quadrants. The various functions of the government
administration aligned with the cosmological outlook.
Again and again we find the orthodox number of four principal queens and of four
chief ministers, the “four pillars” as they were called in Cambodia. In Siam, as in
Burma, they originally governed four parts of the kingdom lying toward the four
cardinal points.85
The south is auspicious, the north is not. Thus, as the ruler faced east, his
military advisor sat to his right, given that Mars, associated with war, lay to
the south. The ruler’s civilian advisor sat to his left, associated with the north.
Extending this principle to the configuration of the realm, southern quadrants (the right side of the east-facing ruler) fell to military administration and
northern quadrants (the left side) resided with civilian administration.86
As the analogue of the divine order, the king stood at the center of the
mandala system. Power radiated out from the center, diminishing in its
radiance by the distance from the center. The light emanating from this
center found its source in the individual merit of the king, the karma that
he possessed. Accomplishment indicated the amount of karma that the
king had accumulated in his present life and in past incarnations. Even the
arrival of Islam did not alter this view. As Moertono argues in reference to
the ruler of the Javanese Mataram sultanate of the seventeenth century:
The concept of the king as the center of the state from whom all power and
authority emanate, around whom all activities of the state are concentrated, is
then perfectly in harmony with the organizational structure of the rule of the
universe.87
Authority was thus highly personalized. A ruler’s authority stemmed
from his accomplishments, and those connected to the ruler in turn
participated in his merit.88 Governing the galactic polity thus meant
controlling people rather than territory. The polity was a system of
personal networks that flowed out from the center and connected to
those loyal to the king.89 “A man’s power was defined by his informal
influence and by his closeness to the king, measured in gifts and honors.
85
86
88
89
Heine-Geldern 1942, 20. He also notes how in the Burmese kingdom of Pyu (roughly
first century BCE to ninth century CE) the structure of vassalage reflected the number of
thirty-three gods on Mount Meru with thirty-two vassals and one king. Heine-Geldern
1942, 18–19.
Alkire 1972, 486. 87 Moertono 1968, 5.
Neil Englehart thus describes early Thai kingship as follows: “The king thereby plays and
important role as a kind of capstone to the social and political order. He serves as a
reference point, defining the pinnacle of karma in human society and assuming a position
of supremacy in social as well as political terms.” Englehart 2001, 23.
Chutintaranond thus speaks of “networks of loyalties” between the ruler and ruled.
Chutintaranond 1990, 90.
The Galactic Polities of Southeast Asia
279
In Southeast Asia, power was something that arose from relationships and
needed to be negotiated.”90 Cliques and factions thus arose around the
center of the king, jockeyed for position, and if possible, placed one of
their own at the center.
Naturally, environmental and geographical features influenced the
physical layout of political administration. Mountain ranges and rivers
factored into the organization of center-periphery relations. However, as
Pierre-Yves Manguin notes for Sriwijaya, the cosmic-political understanding was the most important factor. “The sovereign placed at the
center is the pivot of the system, the focal point of centripetal forces who
maintained its coherence. He is the manager of a network of relations, not
the control of territory.”91
8.5
Conclusion
New perspectives and contrasting mental frameworks advance our
knowledge when they challenge widely accepted wisdoms. The study of
early modern Southeast Asia does exactly that. Foremost it challenges a
modernist understanding of politics.
In that view, political actions and social order are commonly explained
in terms of efficiency and strategic calculation. Material forces, balances
of power, economic gains and losses, motivate actors and propel them to
behave in particular ways. Often, too, rituals, symbols, and sacred
cosmologies are described by the objectives they serve.
By contrast, throughout Southeast Asia, individual lives and the polity
intertwined with the spiritual world. Polities were explicitly premised on
the connection between the micro-cosmic understanding of human and
social relations, and the macro-cosmic understanding of the relation
between the material and spiritual realms. Sahlins’s observations of kingship in Polynesia is equally relevant to Southeast Asian polities:
The rationalization of power is not at issue so much as the representation of a
general scheme of social life: a total “structure of reproduction,” including the
complementary and antithetical relations between king and people, god and man,
male and female, foreign and native, war and peace, heavens and earth.92
90
91
92
Mabbett 1978, 29. On power as the control of manpower and people in the Thai polities,
see also Englehart 2001, 24, 25.
“Le souverain placé au centre est le pivot du système, le point focal des forces centripètes
qui maintiennent sa cohérence. C’est l’entretien d’un réseau de relations, non le contrôle
d’un territoire.” Manguin 2000, 166. Englehart shows that the various Thai terms that
are often translated as “province,” “country,” or “town” actually refer to political community, “not a territory per se.” Englehart 2001, 55.
Sahlins 1985, 81.
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Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
Across a vast territorial and maritime space, shared ideas of social and
political order, a shared mentalité collective, held sway throughout
Southeast Asia. Although there were many local variations of this collective imagination, a shared Hindu-Buddhist heritage infused a discernible
pattern. George Coedès thus referred to the region in his seminal work
simply as “Indianized states,” emphasizing the influences of India and
Hinduism.93 Geok Yian Goh, advances the idea of a Buddhist ecumene.
“The Buddhist ecumene embraces religious ideas, not in the intellectual
and theological sense, but rather as tools to understand the world . . . the
wisdom derived from religious ideology representing ways to manage
this-worldly practices in a righteous manner.”94 While she focuses on
the mainland centers of the ecumene, she also argues that ideas spread
throughout the extended network of commercial exchange and travel.
Given that Hindu and Buddhist influences intermixed with local inflections, and given the spread of ideas across the region I have privileged
neither religion as the main influence but have focused instead on their
syncretic adoption.
Rulers and societies across the region thus understood the world
through similar historical narratives and religious motifs. These shared
patterns facilitated a high degree of commercial and cultural interaction
that greatly exceeded the political control of any one polity, yet one can
identify a socially and culturally intertwined set of polities that constituted
a coherent region.
These collective belief systems were not simply epiphenomenal representations of underlying material realities, or reflections of instrumental
calculations. No doubt individuals used collective beliefs to advance their
strategic interests. But such instrumental uses required the existence of a
set of beliefs that the actor could deploy. Moreover, political administrative configurations with their particular numerical designs were not
simply reducible to material bases, such as economic considerations or
agricultural imperatives.95 Instead, “the reality was accommodated to the
ideal.”96 Nor can we regard these collective beliefs as simply instrumentally motivated principles to facilitate commerce and interaction. They
were not the result of schemes to facilitate some functionally desired
outcome. Instead they were anterior to such calculations. Ideas informed
motives and objectives.
Demonstrating the relevance of particular beliefs in Southeast Asia is
admittedly less straightforward than in the cases of East Asia or the
Islamic Ecumene. In the latter two a dominant ethical-philosophical
93
96
Coedès 1975. 94 Goh 2015, 10, 62–69.
Shorto 2002, 190.
95
Tambiah 1976, 104.
The Galactic Polities of Southeast Asia
281
system, or a dominant religion, exercised primary influence. The statist
sponsorship of Confucianism and the crucial role of Shari’a, among
others, provide more readily accessible indicators of collective consciousness. In the case of Southeast Asia, the difficulties are compounded by the
absence of an extensive archival record. Hence, I have argued that in
order to deduce collective beliefs in Southeast Asia, one must examine the
means by which political order manifested itself in rituals, epic narratives,
and architecture.
In the galactic polity the king represented the supreme deity in earthly
form. He manifested this duality by ritual display, the building of temples,
and the structure of his palace. Kingship had a performative aspect, with
the state oriented toward ceremony and the public expression of social
inequality and status. As Geertz remarks of Bali, “it was a theatre state.”
Public displays “were not means to political ends: they were the ends
themselves, they were what the state was for . . . Power served pomp, not
pomp power.”97 To be the king one had to perform as a king. While much
of modern Western scholarship, at least in American social science, tends
to view ritual display and symbolic attributes of spiritual prowess as
epiphenomenal to material power, in Southeast Asia, they constituted
the very fabric of the polity. Consequently, collective belief systems with
religious views informed material political realities – not the other way
around as is typically argued.
Therefore, the early modern polities of Southeast Asia present a radically different vision. They challenge a Eurocentric perspective and spark
reflection on how collective beliefs and imagination can form the foundation of the social and political order. In so doing this study also challenges
us, as children of modernity, to reflect on the cognitive frames and beliefs
that we bring to bear in understanding and ordering our present society
and politics.98
The historical study of Southeast Asia also challenges a key assumption
that hierarchy is required for social complexity and order in interstate
relations. That view echoes a long tradition within anthropology and
sociology, arguably traceable to Durkheim’s views that undifferentiated
societies with little formal hierarchy display mechanical solidarity and low
degrees of interaction.99 Formal hierarchy is required to enable higher
97
98
99
Geertz 1980, 13.
As Loubna El Amine notes, the relevant difference in intellectual traditions today is not
one of East or West but rather the difference between premodern and modern perspectives. El Amine 2016, 102. Hence, when I speak of “we,” I refer to all readers as
participants in modernity.
Durkheim 1964.
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Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
levels of interaction that lead to organic solidarity. Hierarchy and complex
interaction are thus inextricably linked.
Within international relations scholarship the Durkheimian perspective has famously influenced the structural realist perspective of Kenneth
Waltz.100 Since the international system lacks hierarchy, states interact
only in terms of mechanical solidarity. Waltz’s views correlate with political economic perspectives that high levels of economic interaction
require hegemonic leadership.101 Without a dominant actor, interstate
society is thin at best.
This study of Southeast Asia suggests an alternative view in which a
high level of cultural and economic interaction occurred even in the
absence of a dominant hegemonic actor.102 Joyce White suggests that
the Southeast Asian region historically constituted a heterarchical system.
Heterarchical systems are pluralistic, competitive, and multicentered.103
She further notes the importance in the Southeast Asian system of “interpersonal relationships . . . charismatic leadership” as well as the notion
“that controlling territory was less the focus than controlling labor and
hence people.”104
In sum, the collective belief system led to several important political
consequences. First, the mandala configuration empowered rivals to the
center. Although the king had an exalted ideological status, the duplication of the center, both symbolically and materially, gave vassals the
means to challenge the king’s supremacy. For that reason, internecine
violence was common, as was replacement of the king by family as well as
nonfamily rivals. These systems were inherently unstable.
Second, contrary to expectations that such violence would lead to
greater centralization – the well-known “war made the state” thesis –
the reverse was true.105 Since any king, or usurper, could be challenged
by his vassals or family members, attempts at centralization were frequently doomed from the outset. Galactic polities contained multiple
“gravitational fields” that could pull the center apart. Charismatic challengers, arising from many corners, could demonstrate merit by winning
their struggles against the center. “Once a contestant had secured the
kingship, that victory in itself was proof that he possessed greater merit
than his rival.”106
100
102
103
105
106
Waltz 1979. 101 Kindleberger 1973.
See particularly Reid 1993a. Abu-Lughod draws attention to commercial exchange
networks well before the advent of the European maritime empires; see Abu-Lughod
1989 as well as Curtin 1984; Tracy 1990, 1991.
White 1995, 104. 104 White 1995, 104, 116.
The thesis became particularly popular due to the influence of Charles Tilly’s work.
Tilly 1985.
Baker and Phongpaichit 2016, 68.
The Galactic Polities of Southeast Asia
283
Third, the particular logic of order, the means by which rulers claimed
to legitimate their authority and the particular cosmological understanding of the polity, precluded any sense of territorial delimitation. Authority
radiated outward from the center and diminished with distance, gradually
fading into frontier zones over which rival centers made similar claims.
Multiple overlapping claims to authority traversed these zones.
Fourth, cosmological beliefs had to be made real in order to be experienced by individuals in their day to day lives. Authority had to manifest
itself in material demonstrations, as in architecture, and in ritual display.
To be able to perform the given role was proof that one was authentic.
Conversely, any contestant who could seize the trappings of power, thus
instantaneously acquired validation as the legitimate ruler. As with military victory, the ability to perform the role of king legitimated the usurper.
(Interestingly, the Ayutthayan chroniclers had no term to denote a
usurper.)
To conclude, I submit that the polities of Southeast Asia constituted an
interstate society. However, the norms and principles that operated in this
society were not the result of instrumental designs, similar to the conferences and international treaties of the European states system. Instead I
have advanced a concept of international society in which shared, longstanding, religious, and cosmological views lay at the basis of how polities
were structured and how these polities interacted with each other.
From the late fifteenth century on these polities were confronted by
significant external forces. Islam spread particularly to the areas constituting today’s Malaysia and Indonesia. The arrival of the European
maritime powers proved even more influential, leading to colonial control
over virtually all mainland and maritime Southeast Asia. Only Siam
escaped outright colonization. In the face of those challenges, the
Southeast Asian polities underwent major changes. However, older conceptual frameworks were not displaced altogether. How these polities
confronted the West and how interpolity relations were conducted
forms the topic of the next chapter.
9
Interstate Relations and the Encounter
with Colonial Powers
For generally in the social sciences we give priority to the institutional
forms over their associated practices, in this one direction only, the
conduct of the parties concerned following from an existing
relationship . . . The cultural form (or social morphology) can be produced the other way round: the act creating an appropriate relation,
performatively.
Marshall Sahlins
We are like birds of a tree. When the tree falls we leave it and go in search
of a large tree where we can settle.
Buginese saying1
9.1
Introduction
The previous chapter laid out the logic of organization of the Southeast
Asian galactic empires. The parallelism between cosmological views and
material practices had direct consequences for how the polity was organized as well as for the boundaries of the community. Societies in
Southeast Asia shared a collective imagination about the role of kingship
and authority, which in turn affected politics in multiple areas. Similarly,
cosmological views affected the nature of interstate relations between
different polities.
As we saw, institutions of the realm reflected cosmological beliefs both
in terms of administrative structures, such as divisions between civilian
and military districts, as well the relation of the center to lower rungs of
authority. Kings legitimated their authority based on their personal prowess, that is, their ability to act as the conduit between heaven and earth,
demonstrated by their worldly success. Ritual performance, architectural
structure, and ostentatious display were all marshaled to make the ruler’s
authority manifest. In this chapter I expand on these insights to show how
collective beliefs and the corresponding political organization influenced
1
From a Buginese text (Sulawesi) articulating a right to shift loyalties as a natural state of
affairs in a galactic polity.
284
Interstate Relations and the Encounter with Colonial Powers
285
features of interstate relations such as the nature of warfare, alliance
structure, and the absence of a hegemonic power.
I begin by discussing the implications of how authority was legitimated.
Since the legitimacy of the Chakravartin, the world conqueror, hinged on
the control over people rather than territory, he could not logically admit
to territorial delimitation of his authority. As the world conqueror his
authority extended infinitely in principle. In practice, however, his
authority was configured around personal ties of superior and inferior.
Consequently, the administration of the galactic empire reflected the
personal nature of rule, with lesser lords organized in specific patterns,
usually concentric in nature, and tied to the center in a hub-and-spoke
fashion. Each lesser lord organized his domain in similar fashion, with
each lower-ranked town or palace duplicating the center in organization
and style at a more modest scale.
But as a consequence, Southeast Asian societies were not peaceful.
Replication of the center made defection and rebellion quite common.
The ability of lesser lords to appropriate many of the trappings of rule led
to internecine battles between the king and lesser lords, who were often
family members. Since the lesser lords had their own centers and vassals,
and since they also possessed palaces, sacred sites and temples – albeit on
a lesser scale – many of these lords thought they had reasonable chances of
success in challenging the center.
Yet, as I subsequently discuss, the particular logic of organization
might also have tempered the intensity of violence. While challenges to
the center might have been frequent, the nature of warfare differed from
the large-scale, high-intensity warfare that marked Europe. Moreover, the
inability of the center to repress the multiple rival centers of power also
impeded the rise of any hegemonic power in the region. Lords in frontier
zones could also easily switch sides, since they fell under multiple spheres
of influence given the many centers of power.
I then turn to analyzing how external influences from the late fifteenth
century on affected the region. I suggest that while the arrival of Islam
altered the nature of politics in Malacca and the Indonesian archipelago,
its transformative influence was relatively slight until the nineteenth
century. Until that time, Islam interwove with already established belief
systems. It gained little traction in most of the Southeast Asian mainland
where Theravada Buddhism dominated.
Similarly, the maritime European powers had to adapt to many local
conditions. Indigenous rulers placed the European newcomers within
existing cognitive schemes. Local rulers made alliances with them to
deal with material threats or create opportunities, but such alliances
also had to conform to existing spiritual precepts.
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Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
In the later sections of this chapter I discuss whether the Southeast
Asian polities could adjust to Westphalian principles. By the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the European colonial powers increasingly asserted formal control over most of Southeast Asia. No polity in
Southeast Asia escaped formal colonization, except Siam. Consequently,
I suggest that a discussion of how this country confronted the
Westphalian order serves to elucidate the nature of adaptation and
changes in collective imagination.
Whereas European relations with the Southeast Asian polities till the
end of the eighteenth century had largely been handled by private actors,
notably the trading companies acting at arms-length from the metropole,
governments now started to take over these tasks. The process of formal
colonization also served to differentiate and define European identity
from an allegedly uncivilized “Other.” Positivist international law thus
excluded these polities from the Law of Nations.
Post–World War II scholarship has severely challenged positivist international law, given its justification of colonialism. However, I contend
that critiques of such legal positivist views, laudable as they are, run risks
of their own. By arguing that Southeast Asian polities were in fact part of
the Law of Nations centuries before they were included as such by the
Europeans in the twentieth century, these critiques tend to overlook the
differences between European polities and the galactic empires. Indeed,
taken to the extreme such critiques can lead to its own discourse of
normalization in which such other earlier polities are perceived as proto
nation-states on their way to modernity – early stages in the teleological
path to the modern state.
I conclude with some final remarks regarding the continued relevance
of collective imagination to this day. I do not suggest that a return of these
older collective beliefs can form a blueprint and an alternative mode of
structuring of interstate society. Contrary to the adage, history never
repeats itself in the same form, even if our accounting of that history has
implications for how we wish to order the contemporary world. However,
the interplay of two different collective imaginations, the Westphalian
modernist and the early modern Southeast Asian, illuminates the bases of
our current preconceptions and biases.
9.2
The Interpolity Relations of the Galactic Empires
9.2.1
Authority over People Rather Than Territory
Some scholars suggest that relations between the various Southeast Asian
polities might be understood in roughly similar terms as those in a territorial
Interstate Relations and the Encounter with Colonial Powers
287
state system. In “traditional Southeast Asian international relations, one
may therefore speak of mandalas as states and inter-mandala relations as
international relations within the world mandala system.”2 However, this
view obscures the relevance of understanding the foundations of the galactic
polity. The parallelism between macro-level cosmological understanding
and micro-level sociopolitical organization had profound implications for
the relations between Southeast Asian polities and reveals significant differences from the relations in a sovereign, territorial state system.3
Most importantly, the mandala configuration and the intermandala
system differed dramatically from the Westphalian concepts of juridically
autonomous, and territorially segregated, units. The constitutive units of
the Southeast Asian system had no formal borders. Rule radiated out to
more distant regions with power and claims to authority dissipating across
space in a quasi-concentric fashion. For that reason, Stanley Tambiah’s
metaphorical description of these polities as “galactic empires” is most
apt, and closely resembles the mandala framework applied by Wolters
and others. Wisseman Christie similarly argues that Tambiah’s galactic
polity and Wolters’s notion of the mandala are similar.4
In the mandala configuration authority radiated out from the center,
ideationally in infinite two-dimensional space, but in practice, limited by
rival claims of other Chakravartin.5 While people recognized natural
boundaries and territorial markers such as mountain ranges, rivers, and
even particular trees, the concept of mutually agreed upon artificial
boundaries was literally inconceivable. “Consequently, territorial jurisdiction could not be strictly defined by permanent boundaries, but was
characterized by a fluidity or flexibility of boundary [sic] dependent on the
diminishing or increasing power of the center.”6 Whereas each area of the
2
3
4
5
6
Narendra Law as cited in Rosita Dellios 2003, 2.
Lieberman remains somewhat skeptical of the idea that interstate relations should be
understood as a mandala system. While he concurs that such a logic informed polities until
the late fifteenth century, which he describes as solar polities, he suggests that they
morphed into other types that varied in their organization. He describes some of these
polities as “decentralized Indic,” lasting roughly from 1600 to the mid-nineteenth century. Other polities became more centralized during the same period. See the discussion in
Acharya 2012, 67.
Wisseman Christie 1995, 239. Geertz submits that “so far as the pattern was territorial at
all, it consisted of a series of concentric circles of religio-military power spreading out
around the various city-state capitals.” Geertz 1973, 223.
Despite claims of supreme overlordship, kings were well aware of their counterparts and
overlapping claims to authority. Winichakul 2000, 533.
Moertono 1968, 112; see also 114. Anderson beautifully illustrates the bewilderment with
which Thai mapmakers encountered the European notion of borders as vertical interfaces
that intersected the plane of the earth. Only by the late nineteenth century did the Thai
start conceiving of borders that did not correspond to anything visible on the ground.
Anderson 1991, 172.
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Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
earth’s surface falls to the possession of one and only one state in modern
international law, this notion of exclusivity was entirely foreign to the
polities of Southeast Asia.7 Instead of formal borders there were zones of
contact.
“Internal” administration and “external” relations thus constituted
a seamless web. In order to understand relations between mandala type
polities, it would be more accurate to examine the degree of loyalty of
lesser lords to a particular king, or to examine the connections of lords to
multiple kings, than to study where “domestic” administration ended and
where “interstate” relations began.8
Authority of the centre, outside its own core region, was ritual and symbolic in
nature rather than administrative. No clear distinction, it is felt, was made in this
type of polity between internal relations amongst the polity’s “segments” and
external relations between separate polities. The mandala . . . has thus been
defined by Wolters as an unstable “circle of kings” in a territory without fixed
borders, and in which each subjugated unit of the state remained a complete,
potentially independent, polity with its own centre and court.9
The lack of juridical equality constituted a second important difference
with the Westphalian system. In a mandala system in which polities
claimed to have universal authority, other polities could not be recognized
as having equivalent status. “No matter how relaxed interregional relations normally were, the paradox of a cluster of self-styled ‘unique’
centres reduced the possibility that mandala centres would accept each
other on equal terms and gradually develop closer relations with each
other.”10 Donald McCloud likewise concluded that, “The philosophy
provided, in theory, that only one state could exist, although lesser states
in vassal or tributary status were recognized. Thus a multistate system of
sovereign and, theoretically, equal states did not develop in Southeast
Asia.”11
The system should be regarded as a “patchwork construction of larger
political units, in which the secondary and tertiary centres preserved
a great deal of their internal autonomy in exchange for acknowledging
the centre’s spiritual authority.”12 Spheres of influence could thus shift
from one center to another.
7
8
9
10
11
Solomon 1970, 2–3.
Frontiers were consequently ill defined since they did not delimit the realm of authority
claims. “Often more important within states . . . were personal allegiances, client-patron
relations, differential connexions between court and core, court and periphery; often
more important among states were overlapping hierarchies, dual loyalties.” Tarling
1999a, 2.
Wisseman Christie 1995, 239–40.
Wolters 1999, 39; see also Dellios 2003, 7–8; Chutintaranond 1990, 90.
McCloud 1986, 95; see also 97–101. 12 Lorraine Gesik as cited in Dellios 2003, 1.
Interstate Relations and the Encounter with Colonial Powers
289
The Southeast Asian polities engaged extraregional actors as well,
particularly China, and primarily for commercial reasons. The Ming
and Qing chroniclers classified various polities as tributaries of their
empires. From the perspective of the Southeast Asian monarchs, however, paying tribute to the Chinese Empire did not entail submission but
simply a means to establish commercial relations.13 The Ming and Qing
dynasties only rarely engaged the Southeast Asian states in military conflicts, given their focus on the threats from their north, and if they did it
was largely confined to the mainland. Their maritime connections
remained primarily commercial and when the Chinese rulers tried to
engage the Southeast Asian maritime polities militarily the outcome was
usually unfavorable. A punitive expedition by the Yuan dynasty to Java
met with defeat in 1292. The various maritime expeditions by the Ming,
primarily by Zheng He, in the first half of the fifteenth century, largely
came to an end with the Ming having to focus on their northern
territories.
The center-periphery logic that permeated the galactic empires thus
centered on a dominant power that classified inferior political units as
vassals. Consequently, tributary relations between center and peripheral
units were common, as well as between different empires. But unlike the
Sino-centric system, the rank order between actors would often be challenged due to internal instability, and vassals could be beholden to multiple centers.14 Rival empires aimed to establish superiority over one
another, and contested their respective zones of influence. The lack of
internal stability invited continuous interference in each other’s domains.
The Ayutthaya (Ayudhya) Empire (1351–1767) might serve as an
example of how a mandala polity functioned in practice.15 Ayutthaya
destroyed the Angkor Empire by sacking Angkor in 1431 but it retained
many of Angkor’s cultural and political elements. Both were galactic
empires.16 Angkor, as previously noted, could be considered a “statesponsored construct of knowledge and power that asserted universal
dominion over time and space” (see Figure 9.1).17
13
14
15
16
Southeast Asian rulers seemed untroubled that the language of tribute expressed homage
or even self-abasement. Reid 1993a, 234. They saw such relations largely in instrumental
terms to engage in trade rather than demonstrating subservience. Indeed, in 1443 and
1453, the Ming Court requested that Java send tribute less often. Reid 1993a, 15. Also
see McCloud 1986, 107.
McCloud 1986, 97.
Wolters regards Ayudhya as a mandala system and argues that only by the nineteenth
century did a more centralized notion of statehood in Siam displace the earlier mandala
configurations. Wolters 1999, 31.
Tambiah 1976, 6. 17 Day 2002, 97.
Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
KINGDOMS
NORTHERN
KAMHAENGPET
3
3
3
VAN
RACHATHAN
AYUTTHAYA
4 4 4
4
4
3
1
3
3
NAKHON
RACHASIMA
5
1
3
4
4
OD
IA
BUR
M
2
PHITSANULOK
2
TAVOY
5
2
SAWANKALOK
N
IA S
OT M
LA GDO
N
KI
ESE
KING
CHIANGMAI
PHRAE
MB
DOM
S
NAN
5
CA
290
3
TENASSERIM
1
NAKON
SRI THAMMARAT
5
MALAY
PRINCIPALITIES
Figure 9.1 Political organization of Ayutthaya. From Tambiah 1976, 134
Consequently, in Ayutthaya, power radiated out from a core center.
The king directly controlled the center, and within it, court officials
Interstate Relations and the Encounter with Colonial Powers
291
directly controlled the lesser provinces (4). A set of second-class provinces ruled by the cau fa princes, grandsons or princes of the second class
deemed potentially disloyal (and who indeed tended to rebel), lay around
the core (3). Beyond those was another ring consisting of several major
provinces, larger in size, which duplicated the core region in both administrative and military capacity, albeit on a diminished scale (2). The king’s
sons (princes of the first class) or high court officials ruled these provinces.
Beyond those again were loose tributary states that varied in their loyalty
to the center. Authority gradually dissipated according to the degree of
distance from the radiant core.
As a consequence, the outer-lying tributary polities were under the influence of both Ayutthaya and neighboring mandala systems. These tributary
polities recognized multiple centers as suzerains and navigated between
these centers to carve out greater autonomy for themselves (1, 5).18
Sunait Chutintaranond similarly argues that the Ayutthaya polity can
best be understood as a complex set of connections, based on the mandala
concept of a network of personal relations. The noble families controlled
three major departments: kalahom (the Ministry of Military Administration,
which later became the Ministry of the Southern Provinces), mahatthai
(Ministry of Civil Administration, later the Ministry of the Northern and
Eastern Provinces), and phrakhlang (Ministry of Finance, which controlled
the conduct of foreign trade and foreign relations).19
Ayudhya was a segmentary state. Within its mandala a number of little kingdoms
existed and were designated . . . as subordinate muang [provinces] within the
boundaries of the Ayudhya kingdom proper. However, . . . governors of the first
and second class muangs had their own court of officials which replicated the
situation in the capital but on a reduced scale; they even had their own subordinate muangs. They were, to this extent, “little kings” in the vast but loosely
integrated territories of the Ayudhya kings.20
18
19
20
Tambiah 1976, 135–36. Peter Grave argues that the mandala configuration is less useful
for understanding the Thai upland region and argues instead for viewing social organization by networks of exchange. Nevertheless, his view does not dispute that the lowland
region, the region controlled by Ayutthaya, conformed to a mandala-like configuration.
Interestingly, based on his analysis of temple archaeology, he surmises that Ayutthaya
was militaristic and expansionist. Grave 1995, 258.
Chutintaranond 1990, 92.
Chutintaranond 1990, 96. While Chutintaranond does not fully concur that political
organization conformed to the intended correspondence of macrocosmos and microcosmos, it is difficult to understand the administration of the kingdom otherwise. The
cosmology by which royal power legitimated itself clarifies why the military administration corresponded with the southern parts of the realm and the civilian administration
with the northern. As we observed earlier, in ritual performance the king’s military
advisors sat to the right of the king, who faced east, and civilian advisors sat to his left.
292
Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
He concludes that the mandala logic of organization also occurred in Java
and Burma, and continued in Siam until the nineteenth century.21
Observations of Ayutthaya can thus be generalized. The importance of
cosmological understanding and numerology pervaded many polities of
Southeast Asia.
The division of government and kingdom into categories numbering four, eight,
or thirty-two everywhere betokened a preoccupation with the magic of ritual
orientation to the compass rather than with practical convenience. In Cambodia
and Java there were four chief ministers . . . In ninth-century Java there were
twenty-eight provinces . . . and four ministers. In fourteenth-century Pegu, there
were thirty-two provinces.22
9.2.2
Replicability, Volatility, and Warfare
Archetypes, derived from Hindu and Buddhist religion, thus expressed
themselves materially in political organization. Not only were these polities distinct from the juridically equal and territorially demarcated states
of the Westphalian type but the cosmological basis of political order had
several other significant consequences.
Instability racked these political systems. At first glance one might expect
that the exalted status of the king, the Chakravartin, the “world ruler” who is
the intermediary between heaven and earth, would give rise to autocratic
centralized government. Indeed, one might see in this the “oriental despotism” popularized by writers during the Enlightenment. But the converse was
true.23 Instability sparked high levels of conflict between the extant center
and the nominal vassals, and invited challenges from different empires.
Instability arose not from resistance to despotism but from another
source. Paradoxically, many actors could simultaneously advance competing claims to be the Chakravartin. Since “prowess” lasted only as
long as the leader could maintain his patronage, the material power
yielded by ambitious world conquerors could be fleeting. Victory indicated acquired merit. Because rituals and the possession of sacred
spaces were so critical to legitimate one’s authority, anyone who took
control of the sacred sites or could ostentatiously display his quality as
the king would be seen as the true ruler. “In a tautology no believer in
21
22
23
Chutintaranond 1990, 92, 94, 97.
Mabbett 1983, 81. “At its center was the divine king . . . buildings, roads, city walls. and
even, ceremonially, his wives and personal staff were deployed quadrangularly around
him according to the directions of the four sacred winds.” Geertz 1973, 222.
Similarly, Neil Englehart suggests that the concept of the Chakravartin in the Ayutthayan
kingdom lent itself to a form of royal absolutism, but given that the ruler had to remain
true to his spiritual function, Buddhism tempered the more extreme interpretations.
Englehart 2001, 30.
Interstate Relations and the Encounter with Colonial Powers
293
karma could question, spiritual power was manifest in worldly
success . . . in Burma no less than in Amboina and the Philippines
military success became a demonstration of spiritual power.”24
Control over the material manifestations of legitimate authority was
taken as “evidence” of spiritual superiority over one’s rivals. Thus, any
actor in possession of the capital, or the privileged sacred site, had to be
the “real” Chakravartin. Others in turn could claim that their center was
the real analog to the cosmic order. “Every center was infinitely reproducible across cosmopolitan space, such that the golden Mount Meru
and the river Ganga could be and were transported everywhere.”25 Given
that many contenders could assume the mantle of world conqueror by
invoking similar rituals, or by creating their own Mount Meru, internecine struggles occurred constantly.
The requirement that the king rule by dharma, morality and righteousness, created additional factors of instability. If the king did not behave
according to the precepts of righteousness, he could be resisted or even
killed.26 In this the foundational mythologies of some of the Southeast
Asian polities share some similar traits with those of Micronesia, although
with Hindu-Buddhist inflections. Sahlins notes how divine kingship itself
is often founded by great kings and chiefs who stand outside their society.
They are not “of” the people they rule. “Rather than a normal succession,
usurpation itself is the principle of legitimacy.”27 Out of the chaos of
usurped succession, the king then becomes the one who orders the world.
The founding of the Majapahit kingdom (c. 1293 to the early 1500s) was
thus recounted in epic narratives as the creation of order, prior to which
the area had been ruled by supernatural monsters and demons. The
Majapahit kings had created order out of biblical chaos.28
Inchoate rules of succession, combined with institutionalized polygamy and the demands of extended family, wreaked further havoc.
Rebellion was thus frequent, particularly when princes hereditarily
acquired the territories of their fathers.29
24
25
27
29
Lieberman 2003a, 221. Lubis notes the same phenomenon in Java and Malaya. As long
as the king was favored with wahyu (god-given power), he could rule with divine grace.
However, he could also fall out of favor, in which case wahya would be bestowed upon
someone else. Kingship was fluid. Lubis 1987, 24. Wolters describes individuals with
personal achievement and leadership as “men of prowess” and concludes, “But ‘prowess’
was always a personal quality and not capable of being transmitted.” Such men would
acquire an entourage that remained loyal only as long as they received patronage. Wolters
1999, 112, 113.
Day 2002, 95. 26 Tambiah 1976, 51.
Sahlins 1985, 80. See also Andaya 1993a, 66. 28 Geertz 1980, 14, 15.
Shorto 2002, 193. The Aung Thwins note how succession struggles befuddled dynasties
in Myanmar. Since the eldest son of the king customarily became the next king, it created
tension with the crown prince’s uncles, since they, as the king’s brothers, could also be
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Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
Royal lineage was hardly a guarantor of success. To give one stark
example, “only eight out of twenty-six rulers of Angkor were sons or
brothers of their predecessors.”30 The succession struggles in the
Ayutthayan Empire are likewise illustrative. Of the twenty-three reigning
monarchs from 1351 until the fall of the empire in 1767, only seven were
uncontested and occurred by nomination (not counting the first reigning
monarch). The fifteen others ended up in contests or coups. The last
century and a half, in particular, was highly unstable with only one out of
nine successions being a case of nomination. And it is noteworthy that
“the contestants were all somehow related to or associated with the
previous king. Sons and brothers were the most common.”31
Since lineage provided no particular advantage – unlike the case with
Asian or Islamic rulers who (fictitiously or not) could trace their genealogy to renown predecessors – many lords could aspire to greatness,
provided one might mobilize the needed network of followers.
Successful challengers could thus arise from within as well as beyond
the family.
The replicative logic by which peripheral centers reproduced the capital, and lesser centers in turn reproduced their peripheral centers, created
the typical principal-agent problems with which social scientists will be
familiar. The lesser princes and lords, nominally the agents of the king,
maintained material and cultural resources that made them viable contenders to rule themselves. Their reproduction of the capital’s layout and
their building of temples in similar fashion provided the cultural resources
for legitimation. Materially, given that they were allowed to maintain their
own armed forces, they had the means to challenge the center when they
saw the opportunity. Merit, moreover, might be proven by successful
resistance to an overlord. The same logic applied across the gradations
of mandalas from the capital to the lesser capitals, to the towns, and then
villages.
The autonomous position of regional leaders and power holders presented problems; the danger of disintegration was ever present from regional chiefs who felt
30
31
legitimate heirs. Moreover, if the uncles were cut out of the succession, this would also
affect the uncles’ entire lineage. Thwin and Thwin 2012, 165. As noted in Chapter 4,
similar succession principles split the Mongol rulers.
Wolters 1999, 108, fn. 6. For his discussion of the general indifference to descent as
legitimation of authority, also see 38. This perspective could still be found among tribes
in the Philippines in the twentieth century. As Edward Dozier notes of the Kalinga in
Luzon, “positions of leadership or prominence . . . are acquired by individuals through
individual achievement, not because they belong to specific families . . . there is no
ranking of common or prominent families.” Dozier 1967, 21.
Baker and Phongpaichit 2016, 66.
Interstate Relations and the Encounter with Colonial Powers
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themselves strong enough to resist the powers of the central authority and to stand
on their own, or even worse, to seize the throne for themselves.32
The lack of fixed boundaries only compounded the problem. If formal
borders could serve to delineate clear spheres of authority and claims to
jurisdiction, the absence thereof made frontier zones attractive targets.
When a capital center wavered, rival centers would immediately try to
capitalize on its weakness. As Wolters observed, “Mandalas would
expand and contract in concertina-like fashion.”33
9.2.3
The Nature of Warfare and the Instability of Alliances
Warfare and violence were thus a direct consequence of the mandala
system. They constituted the natural state of affairs. Heine-Geldern is
worth quoting at length.
The deification of the king . . . has in no way succeeded in stabilizing government,
rather the contrary . . . the theory of divine incarnation, and even more so that of
rebirth and of karma, provided an easy subterfuge for usurpers . . . Often the
crown simply fell to the prince who was the quickest to seize the palace and to
execute his brothers. Under these circumstances it is no wonder that the empires
of Southeast Asia from the very beginning were torn by frequent rebellion, often
resulting in the overthrow of kings or even dynasties.34
The existing collective imagination consequently also rewarded conquest as a means of legitimation. Thus the Burmese rulers of the Second
Ava dynasty (fourteenth to sixteenth centuries) aspired to conquer neighboring Ayutthaya, because conquest “confirmed the king’s image of
a cakravartin (‘world conqueror’) not only to neighbouring states . . . but
to his own population and ruling elite.”35
The distribution of power among the polities of Southeast Asia was
thus in constant flux since instability exacerbated the influences of demographic shifts and economic and environmental fluctuations. “Given the
inherent instability of the states themselves, there was little likelihood that
a ‘balance of power’ could be sustained for long periods.”36
32
33
35
Moertono 1968, 120. Noorduyn thus suggests that the decline of the Javanese Majapahit
kingdom (thirteenth to early sixteenth centuries) largely came from internal civil war
rather than from external influences such as the spread of Islam and the arrival of the
Western powers. Noorduyn 1978, 208–9, 243. Similarly, Geertz argues that the state was
continuously torn between the centralizing tendencies of the exemplary center and the
structure of the galactic polity, which was inclined toward fragmentation. Geertz, 1980,
18–19. Central rulers, of course, were not unaware of this threat and thus sought to limit
defection by prohibiting interaction among the vassals, attempting to bind their loyalty to
the center in a hub-and-spoke pattern. Tambiah 1976, 120.
Wolters 1999, 28. 34 Heine-Geldern 1942, 27.
Aung-Thwin and Aung-Thwin 2012, 160. 36 McCloud 1986, 93.
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Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
Due to the nature of the mandala configuration, the lack of stable
boundaries, victory as the basis for legitimation, and the instability of
rivals, the galactic polities aimed at maximum extension when possible.
Maritime empires aimed to expand their commercial networks as wide as
feasible, while land-based empires aimed at the greatest territorial expansion. The objectives of foreign policy “were the aggrandizement of the
king and court to reinforce the king’s claim to domestic legitimacy, and
greater wealth for the kingdom so that the preeminent position of the
king . . . could be bolstered further.”37
In terms of international relations scholarship the polities of the
region were thus “offensive realists.”38 They sought to maximize their
power by conquest and expansion, even beyond what might be required
from a purely defensive standpoint. They sought to dominate other
states.
However, the mandala logic of organization might also have had a less
negative effect. Compared to early modern European states that vied for
territorial control, some scholars argue that the intensity of conflict was
relatively low in Southeast Asian polities.39 Even though warfare was
frequent, casualty rates were usually modest and the defeated enemy
was rarely extinguished but rather absorbed. Defeated rulers often simply
became nominal vassals of the victor. “When a state was conquered, there
seems to have been no idea in Mon or Burmese, any more than in Indian,
political theory that it was possible to extinguish it as a sovereign entity, or
to annex it in the modern sense, though its ruler might be replaced by
a nominee of the conqueror.”40
Michael and Maitrii Aung-Thwin also suggest that warfare was restricted
to a small segment of the overall population. Since power emanated from
the center, most of the fighting usually occurred between contenders for the
throne, often family members. Consequently, “Most of the fighting was
done by a particular class of people – crown troops – allotted to myosa to
37
38
39
40
McCloud 1986, 92.
John Mearsheimer has articulated offensive realist theory most explicitly. See particularly
his discussion in Mearsheimer 2014, xiv–xvii, 4–8. Mearsheimer explains offensive
realism as driven by international anarchy and balances of power. Other realists, however,
using the same assumptions, conclude that states are defensive realists and thus less
expansionist. This lack of consensus alone suggests how the study of collective beliefs can
help explain particular choices in foreign policy.
Wolters 1999, 36, 164. Vietnam was one exception, arguably due to Chinese influences
that placed greater emphasis on centralized administration and territorial control.
Wolters 1999, 36–37, 143–46.
Shorto 2002, 192. Wisseman Christie suggests that this was not the case for the Mataram
state of the eighth to tenth centuries but suggests that Srivijaya did maintain conquered
polities as client states rather than annexing them outright. Wisseman Christie 1995, 275.
Interstate Relations and the Encounter with Colonial Powers
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govern their fiefs, which were usually major towns with strategic and economic value.”41
Given that power was measured by one’s control over people, and given
the scarcity of manpower, annihilation of a rival population made little
sense.42 For the same reason, a ruler might be disinclined to risk great losses
among his own army. Instead, extending one’s control through alliances, for
example, through marriage, might be more desirable, even if such alliances
were unstable.43 Conquered lords were thus not entirely subjugated but
retained considerable autonomy, as was the case in Ayutthaya.
The importance of dharmashastric precepts might have been a factor as
well. Conquered rulers who had submitted themselves to Buddhist doctrine were to be retained, a principle that emperor Asoka purportedly
followed in his Mauryan conquests. The victor did not, and on the
cultural basis of his legitimation should not, seek to annex and centralize
his authority.
We cannot emphasize strongly enough how important in the actual history of
Southeast Asian polities has been this pattern of over-rule and conversion to the
dhamma of the conquered rulers or subjected peoples, . . . which is more an
embracing of diversity around a center than a centralization of power itself.44
Moreover, given that regional lords would shift loyalties and seek best
terms between the various rival centers, accommodation rather than all-out
war might be a strategic decision. For example, “the authors of the Glass
Palace Chronicle of the Kings of Burma (Hmannan Mahayazawindawgyi,
1829) revealed that sixteen of nineteen governors of major provincial cities
of Ayudhya transferred their loyalty to the Burmese commanders-in-chief,
Nei-myou-thihapatei and Maha-naw-ra-hta, in order to protect their lives
and status when the Burmese army approached their city (1766).”45
There was also a disincentive to inflict large numbers of casualties since
power revolved around the ability to control people rather than territory.
41
42
43
44
45
Aungh-Thwin and Aung-Thwin 2012, 140. The myosa (town-eater) system allotted
a portion of revenue from a given part of a city to the king’s family members on
a nonhereditary basis. Usually this also meant the retention of an armed cohort.
Conflicts were not about borders or territory. “Disagreements . . . were virtually never
concerned with border problems but with delicate questions of mutual status . . . and of
rights to mobilize particular bodies of men.” Geertz 1980, 23–24.
Wolters 1999, 115.
Tambiah 1976, 47. But one should not overemphasize the importance of such dharmashastric precepts. As Tambiah recognized, on occasion, extreme violence did occur,
including against fellow Buddhists. Tambiah 1976, 65.
Chutintaranond 1990, 94. Aung-Thwin and Aung-Thwin likewise observe that “since
fighting men were more valuable alive than dead, when the situation warranted most
would desert en masse in favour of the impending winner.” Aung-Thwin and AungThwin 2012, 140.
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Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
Conversely, forced deportations of large numbers of peoples to bring
them closer to the conquering center made more sense.46
Finally, the lack of specified boundaries, while making war more frequent, might conversely also have diminished its intensity. In a sovereign
territorial state system, territory is held to be indivisible. Each part of the
geographic state constitutes a materially and conceptually integrated
whole. Consequently, territorial loss of a periphery is no less significant
than loss of the capital. The mandala logic of the Southeast Asian polities,
however, made peripheral losses far less significant. Dutch observers in
the seventeenth century were thus perplexed that Southeast Asian combatants readily abandoned terrain when needed. Flexibility and retreat
were common practices and hence few fortifications were built.47
Conversely, other specialists of the region have suggested that warfare
might have been more intense and involved more casualties.48 Dutch and
Portuguese observers, as well as indigenous accounts, describe the common practice of headhunting in the Indonesian islands. A man’s prowess
was measured by an accumulation of heads of defeated enemies in
battle.49 In other cases relatively large numbers of troops could be mobilized that used firearms and cannon. Contrary to some common perceptions the Western forces were not vastly superior in military technology.50
Warfare, in short, sometimes did not just consist of small-scale raids, but
resembled in some respects the type of war in Europe.51 As state formation on the Southeast Asian mainland led to more centralized administration the nature of warfare changed. Indeed, Peter Lorge describes the
Burmese conquest of Pegu (1753–59) as genocidal.52
Victor Lieberman suggests some reasons why scholars have reached
different conclusions regarding the intensity of war. In some of the
46
48
49
51
52
Anderson makes this point. Anderson 1990, 43. 47 McCloud 1986, 105.
Tony Day argues that war might have been more destructive. Nevertheless, he, too,
concludes that in Siam, Burma, and Java, states were oriented toward the dispersal of
power rather than centralization – unlike cases in Europe, where war led to state
making. Day 2002, 231–32. Peter Lorge suggests that the literature might come to
different conclusions due to whether one stresses the importance of external factors,
particularly the influence of trade, as Anthony Reid does, or whether one focuses on
internal developments, which is Victor Lieberman’s approach. Moreover, Reid focuses
on the maritime polities, whereas Lieberman’s expertise dealt with the mainland, particularly Burma. Lorge 2008, 97–98.
Andaya 2004, 64. 50 On this point, see particularly Sharman 2019.
In the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Southeast Asian polities particularly started to model their armies after those in the West. See Charney 2004a, chapters
9–10. See also Charney 2004b, 5–12.
Lorge 2008, 97. Conversely, Leonard Andaya argues that even the increasing use of
firearms did not change the character of warfare all that much. “In Java massed battles
were rare . . . Rarely were there many casualties, nor did the battles last longer than two
hours.” Andaya 1999, 43.
Interstate Relations and the Encounter with Colonial Powers
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preliterate societies with a less complex political organization that
revolved around chiefs, the intensity of war might have been high due to
practices such as head hunting and ritual sacrifice. However, in more
complex societies in the region, such as the Moluccas, or the land-based
polities, such as Burma, this was not the case. Regional variation might
thus account for some differences. He also notes that the nature of
Southeast Asian warfare remained different from that in Europe,
although the size of armies grew with greater centralization due to
increased trade and western influences. Europeans were committed to
total war and “a determination not merely to rout the enemy, but to inflict
crushing casualties that contrasted sharply with Southeast Asian traditions of desultory encounter and low fatalities.” Lieberman, moreover,
observes “a frequent preference for feint and withdrawal, rather than
bloody encounter, a tendency to operate in small groups rather than in
large-scale formations.”53
Despite the different views regarding the level of conflict, there is broad
agreement on key features of warfare throughout premodern Southeast
Asia. Warfare had a spiritual character besides a material manifestation.
Performance and display were critical elements in the prelude to war, the
conduct of violence, as well as in the termination of conflict. Ritualized
oath taking and public displays of loyalty featured in the prelude to battle.
These displays cemented alliances with spiritual sanctions against
transgressors.54 Stylized declarations of war were sent to the enemy
prior to commencement of hostilities. Termination of war and peace
treaties likewise required elaborate ceremonial displays. All-out warfare
might also be averted by combat among the main contenders. “Since only
the more prominent leaders would fight on elephants, battles often
depended . . . on a duel or limited skirmish between the princes and
noblemen of the warring armies.”55
Indigenous accounts, featured in oral narratives, similarly reveal the
spiritual aspect of war. The war was justified based on individual wrongs
done to specific heroic individuals. The hero’s honor had been sullied. Or
one individual had betrayed another.
Warfare could thus sometimes be ended by settlements. If status and
honor could be regained, and if the spiritual balance restored, a simple
fine for the transgressor might prevent overt warfare.56 Cultural aspects
53
54
55
Lieberman 2003a, 220, 222.
Leonard Andaya stresses the holistic character of war in which actual combat was only
one element. Consequently, the protocol for war declaration as well as the rituals of
mobilization and oath taking were key precursors to actual combat. See Andaya 2004,
55, 58.
Andaya 1999, 47. 56 Andaya 2004, 76.
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Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
could thus directly affect the conduct of war. For example, in South
Sulawesi fortified sites “were determined less by their military strategic
value than by their association with potent spirits [keramat].”57 Given that
material objects were endowed with spiritual value as well, rulers valued
firearms not only for their use in combat but also as spiritual protective
devices. They thus accumulated “large numbers of decorative and unuseable [sic] guns.”58
9.2.4
Polycentrism Rather Than Hegemony
The particular logic of order throughout Southeast Asia provides us with
a partial explanation as to why no single hegemonic empire arose across
this region, even though multiple powerful kingdoms emerged and vied
for dominance. Indeed, there were frequent conflicts between these polities. One might have expected that such a hegemonic power would
emerge, given the overlapping claims to rule and given the logic of the
cosmological center. Indeed, in its ideal manifestation the “logical end
result of the intermandala relationships is the emergence of the
chakravartin . . . (world ruler) . . . the ideal form of temporal power is
a world empire.”59 Nevertheless, this did not occur.
Environmental factors no doubt played a role in limiting such aspirations. The seas, mountainous highlands, and tropical forests made it
difficult for any authority to deploy forces over great distances and inhospitable terrain.
But at least equally important was the manner in which authority was
structured and legitimized. This directly impinged on the ability of aspiring rulers to actually fulfill their claims to being “universal sovereigns”
and “world conquerors.” For one, the character of galactic polities
affected communal identity. In a territorial state system, rulers seek to
fuse communal identity with the territorially defined state. Ideally, nation
and state are symbiotically linked. As Benedict Anderson reminds us, the
imagined community of modernity, the nation, is limited in scale and it
aims at sovereignty. “The gage and emblem of this freedom is the sovereign state.”60 The markers of inclusion and exclusion are territorial and
rigid.
In Southeast Asia, however, individuals – lords and commoners alike –
interacted in a network of overlapping and crosscutting spheres of influence based on personal ties, and without formal territorial borders to
57
58
60
Andaya 2004, 67. The destruction of an enemy’s food crops was a legitimate tool of war,
except for the destruction of rice fields, which were sacred. Andaya 2004, 72–73.
Andaya 1999, 51. 59 Anderson 1990, 44. See also Trocki 2009, 339–40.
Anderson 1991, 7.
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61
delimit spheres of control. To extend the galactic metaphor, actors were
simultaneously part of multiple “gravitational fields.” Depending on the
particular fate of a given center, such fields were fluid and ever-changing,
and actors navigated among them. Actors could exit and navigate politically and physically between such spheres, creating flexibility unknown to
the rulers or populations of modern Westphalian polities. The ruler of
Palembang in 1747 was well aware of this condition, “It is very easy for
a subject to find a lord, but it is much more difficult for a lord to find
a subject.”62
The imagined community was cosmologic and symbolic in nature, not
territorial. Common myths of origination, common views of what constituted right kingship, and common views of what the political order
should be influenced one’s collective identity. Criteria of inclusion and
exclusion were flexible. As with the multiethnic, multiracial empires of
previous chapters, authority could be multivocal. Local identities could
be accommodated and the overarching archetype of the mandala organization could be adjusted to fit different circumstances.
Moreover, balances of power, alliances, networks of friends and foes,
were all fluid. Indeed, as Benedict Anderson demonstrates, the very
concept of power was understood differently, both conceptually and
spatially. In the modern state, power ends at the frontier (the border).
“Ten yards this side of the frontier, their power is sovereign; ten yards
the other side, it does not exist.”63 Within this state, power is homogenous and distributed evenly. By contrast in the Javanese states power
was not homogenous. Power simply dissipated the further one moved
from the center. The state was defined by the center, with the frontier as
irrelevant.64
These factors conspired with the inherent instability of the galactic
polity to insure that no state came to dominate the system as a whole.
The ability of peoples to move across boundaries and shift loyalties made
it difficult for any would be hegemon to mobilize resources on a consistent
basis. And, since alliances were fluid rising powers could quickly see their
allies abandon their cause. Finally, no single actor could claim a unique
cultural base to legitimate his claim to hegemonic standing, as for
61
62
64
Resink observes that only one clear-cut territorial delimitation – the partition of the
Javanese realm Erlangga in 1042 – is known from the pre-1500 period (which he denotes
as the early international or Hindu-Indonesian period). Resink 1968, 43.
As noted by Watson-Andaya 1999, 97. 63 Anderson 1990, 41–42.
Anthony Giddens thus rightly cautions against seeing physical markers or installations in
boundary or frontier zones as borders. “Borders . . . are only found with the emergence of
nation-states.” Giddens 1987, 50. Even if polities agreed on some sort of boundary
delimitation, they did not define the extension of sovereignty as borders do in the
Westphalian system.
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Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
example, the Chinese emperor, or the Holy Roman emperor could. Any
successful contender could claim to be Chakravartin.
The collective belief system also reveals the flaws in seeing the
Southeast Asian system in modernist terms and as essentially similar to
a contemporary state system in which actors continuously engage in
balancing or bandwagoning behavior.65 Balancing and bandwagoning
explanations assume a clear demarcation of externality, that is, a clear
understanding of what constitutes domestic politics and international
politics – with balancing and bandwagoning occurring in the latter
realm. They also assume that states are more or less unitary actors and
can choose to balance against an external threat (or conversely bandwagon with a powerful state).
However, mandala type polities did not have a clear definition of
externality and they did not behave as coherent unitary actors. Thus,
existential threats to the Srivijayan king, or the emperor of Majapahit, or
the Ayutthayan ruler might come from sons, vassals, rulers on the periphery, or distant maritime powers, and so on. This is not to say that rulers
did not focus on maintaining their position, or did not seek allies wherever
they might find them. Between the various polities usually the polity
closest to one’s own provided the imminent threat since mandala spheres
of influence would overlap at the periphery. Hence, Moertono describes
a pattern where the nearest polity is one’s enemy, with the polity on the
other side of the enemy as one’s ally – an alliance pattern already noted by
Kautilya.66
However, in the absence of any clear distinction of internality and
externality, the enemy might mean the most proximate vassal or
a polity at greater distance. Relative power of course mattered but
who or what constituted a “threat” was open to multiple interpretations. The ever-changing context made any preconception of who
would balance with whom ultimately a matter of inductive and highly
contextualized assessment.
The cosmologically influenced perceptions of what actually constituted
a threat to the stability of the system thus provide a forceful indictment of
Western-centric views. From the Westphalian perspective of modern
realist international relations, the stability of systems are viewed in
a mechanical and material fashion. A scale in balance must contain
equal weights. Similarly one expects that each action will generate an
equal and opposite reaction. Hence, balancing between two states entails
65
66
On the concepts of balancing and bandwagoning, see Walt 1987, 17–21, 27–33.
“A state’s belligerence in the first place directed towards its closest neighbor(s), thus
making necessary the friendship of the state next to the foe, which, because of its
proximity, is also a natural enemy of the foe.” Moertono 1968, 71.
Interstate Relations and the Encounter with Colonial Powers
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the development of equal material capabilities to offset any movement
(aggression) from either side.
In the Southeast Asian scheme, balancing also entailed a cosmological
concern. In some cases, this required that in order to maintain stability in
the interstate system, the perfect symmetry and the numerical ordering of
the universe had to be reflected. The next section provides an example of
how such cosmological schemes affected material relations even in the
face of new external pressures.
9.3
The Arrival of Islam and the Western Powers
9.3.1
New Beliefs Connect with the Old
Southeast Asian developments were never self-contained. Positioned at
key maritime crossroads and tied to transoceanic network for millennia,
the region was always subject to external impacts from India but also from
the Middle East and China. New influences arrived by the late fifteenth
century when Islam started to make inroads in Malaya and Indonesia.
Only decades later, the first Portuguese and Spanish explorers foreshadowed the arrival of Western maritime empires.
Undoubtedly these influences affected the Southeast Asian political
structures. Rulers used both Islam and the growing trade network that
accompanied European trading companies to expand the capabilities of
the center. Many of the galactic polities started to transform to more
centralized entities, particularly as their rulers marshaled new justifications for their authority and acquired resources from commercial
activities.67 Lieberman argues that the continental polities tended to
shift more to centralized polities than the maritime colonial polities that
relied on commerce and the coastal trade. In Burma, for example, economic development and the rise of external trading networks led to
greater centralization well before the British imperial expansion of the
nineteenth century.68
There is some disagreement regarding the extent to which Islam altered
local conditions and conceptual frames. On the one hand, Islam provided
67
68
See particularly Reid on the influences of Islam, Christianity, and increased commercial
activities. Reid 1993b. Also see Reid 1993a.
Lieberman describes the Burmese polity as having a galactic structure, but one more
integrated than before; however, he does not elaborate. He does provide several reasons
for why local rulers had more incentive to conform to rituals, which were ceremonies that
the center favored. These ceremonies enabled local elites to increase their prestige and to
receive greater patronage from the center. Lieberman 1993, 240, 243–44.
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Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
an alternative means for rulers in Southeast Asia to legitimate their position. The use of Shari’a might serve to expand their authority over society.
On the other hand, the influence of Islam remained relatively confined
to the areas that now make up contemporary Indonesia and Malaysia. In
the other Southeast Asian polities, Cambodia, Laos, Siam, and Burma,
Theravada Buddhism continued to dominate.69 Vietnam retained
Confucian norms. Moreover, although almost half of Southeast Asia’s
population might have been Muslims by the late nineteenth century,
three-quarters of that population lived on Java alone.70
Even in the Indonesian archipelago the influence of Islam was not
uniform. Some islands, such as Bali, remained relatively immune to
Islam altogether, and local beliefs mingled with Hindu-Buddhist elements. Older conceptual schemes thus retained considerable influence.
Contrary to arguments that Islam gradually displaced Hindu-Buddhist
and indigenous beliefs in many of the Indonesian islands, M. C. Ricklefs
submits that Islam superimposed on preexisting belief systems.71 The
opposition between the different religious strands only arose in the latter
part of the nineteenth century, and was not present throughout much of
Javanese history. William Clarence-Smith thus speaks of Javanism, “a
syncretic amalgam of Sufi Islam with past Hindu, Buddhist and Animist
civilizations.”72
In addition, the European colonial powers, specifically the Dutch in
Indonesia aimed to diminish the influence of the ulama. Consequently,
they favored local notables and advanced them to positions of local power
brokers. In short, while Islam affected society and politics, its influence
until the nineteenth century was largely complementary rather than contradictory to extant beliefs.
9.3.2
Balancing with the Cosmic Order in Mind
Local mentalities and beliefs even shaped the realities of military force.
Evaluations of the appropriate balance of power occurred through cultural lenses. The impact of the arriving European maritime powers was
refracted through Hindu-Buddhist cosmological beliefs and sacred
numerology. The Spice Islands, specifically the Moluccan islands, provide an illuminating example of how the maritime empires were sometimes interjected into Southeast Asian conceptions.
Chris van Fraassen has studied the configuration around two basic
island groups: the North Moluccan islands proper (Maluku) and the
69
71
Clarence-Smith 2010, 242. 70 Clarence Smith 2010, 240.
Ricklefs 2014, 402–3. 72 Clarence-Smith 2010, 240, 259–61.
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73
Ambonese islands. The former were organized into four kingdoms
corresponding to the socio-cosmic order. Maluku’s original four kingdoms divided in four islands: Ternate; Tidore; Djailolo (Jailolo) now
known as Halmahera; and Batjan (or Bacan) dominated by the principal
village Kaisiruta.74 Ternate and Tidore were the most powerful among
these four, and, aligning with views of cosmic dualism, were meant to be
on opposite sides. Alliances were made to adhere to socio-cosmic numerology as well as to maintain this dualism.
The rivalry between Tidore and Ternate led to alliances with the later
arriving Portuguese and Spanish. Both European powers were superimposed on and merged with the existing divisions so as to maintain the
balance of the four kingdoms that were dominated by the two main
islands.
This juxtaposition of Ternate and Tidore extended to the southern
Spice Islands, the Ambonese islands, and again conformed to cosmic
numerology. In the Ulilima alliance, the federation of five, Ternate was
the preeminent power. Tidore led the alliance of nine, the Ulisiva.75
Despite this island rivalry, European observers were puzzled that there
still existed a great degree of cooperation between Ternate and Tidore,
for example, in maritime exchanges. The islands’ interactions mixed
rivalry with cooperation, and conflict often stopped short of all-out
war.76 That is, the socio-cosmic order provided a sense of shared understanding that made interaction possible despite political antagonism.
Both conflict and cooperation were needed to maintain the dualism that
informed the universal order.
Leonard Andaya’s account of the same islands affirms the importance
of these shared conceptions. He, too, observed the importance of the
symmetry and the dualism between the two key islands of Ternate and
Tidore. Along with the other two islands in the group, both were associated with the cardinal orientation in four quadrants. In ritual division,
Ternate corresponded with the north and west, Tidore with the south and
east. Despite their political plurality they were symbiotically linked.
73
74
75
76
Van Fraassen 1992, 33–34.
Ternate, Tidore, and Batjan, together with islands Makian and Moti, were the primary
Spice Islands due to their abundance of cloves.
Lubis 1987, 77–78. Lubis does not link this to the numerology of the mandala configuration, but the numbers 5 and 9 are reminiscent of the Hindu-influenced numerology.
Van Fraassen notes how the union of the 5 and the union of the 9 in the Ambonese islands
were linked in people’s imagination with the dualism of Ternate and Tidore, even though
the latter had no real influence in Ambon. However, given the dualistic belief system in
Ambon, the differences between Tidore and Ternate were categorized within the
Ambonese dualism. Van Fraassen 1992, 43, 52–53.
Van Fraassen 1992, 40.
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Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
“Unity is forged by common adherence to legitimizing myths that establish the physical and spiritual parameters of the world.”77
By choice as well as indigenous maneuver, the arriving Dutch,
Portuguese, and Spanish were integrated into these preexisting dualisms.
The maritime powers’ contests to control the Spice Islands thus often
positioned each of them on either side of the Ternate-Tidore dualism. At
the same time, the indigenous rulers used the external powers to advance
their positions vis-à-vis local rivals. Before the Dutch made inroads,
Ternate tended to ally with the Portuguese, and Tidore with Spain.
Ternate later fell out with Portugal. After unification with Spain,
Portugal then allied with Tidore against Ternate. After the Dutch arrival
in 1599, Ternate, now allied with the Dutch, managed to oust the Iberian
powers altogether, thus establishing a Dutch monopoly in the spice
trade.78 Rather than jointly ally, or balance, if you will, against the
external powers, the two main islands behaved in their “apposite and
complementary roles, including being on opposing sides in a war.”79
Similar to van Fraassen’s conclusion, Andaya noted moreover that in
the midst of war, Ternate and Tidore still interacted with each other.
Saifuddin, the Sultan of Tidore in the mid-seventeenth century, thus
argued that the Moluccans depended upon the welfare of both Ternate
and Tidore for their stability.80 Dualism was essential for overall balance.
It was also at that time that the Moluccan kingdoms argued to the
Dutch that Jailolo had to be restored to maintain the cosmic balance, even
though Jailolo had greatly declined in material terms.
Even though the conquest of Jailolo had occurred more than a century before . . .
these details were irrelevant. What was relevant, especially in troubled times, was
the belief that there had to be four kingdoms . . . The actors and the times may
have changed, but the “truth” remained: Maluka was the four kingdoms, and its
welfare depended on their continued existence.81
The restoration of Jailolo was not simply a rhetorical statement but
apparently became one of the rallying cries of the Nuku rebellion that
broke out in 1780.82
77
78
80
82
Andaya 1993b, 23; Andaya 1993a, 112. Anthony Reid argues that Andaya’s main
conclusions still hold despite some disagreements between Van Fraassen and Andaya.
Moreover, he notes that Andaya’s conclusions parallel Wolters’s use of the mandala and
Geertz’s notion of the theater state. Andaya thus shows the “complementarity of plurality
and unity in Malukan statecraft and the unifying power of myth,” which the Europeans
found difficult to comprehend. For the debate, see van Fraassen 1994, 423–26; Reid
1995, 132–35; Van Fraassen 1995, 289–91.
Andaya 1993a, 116, 132, 138–43, 156. 79 Andaya 1993a, 145, 152.
Andaya 1993a, 55. 81 Andaya 1993a, 173, 179–80; van Fraassen 1992, 52.
Andaya 1993a, 215, 244–45.
Interstate Relations and the Encounter with Colonial Powers
307
Thus, in the first phase of European imperialism, the European powers
adjusted to the existing political milieu. They were hardly in a position to
advance their objectives by force alone, and they grafted onto existing
institutions rather than displacing them. Mercantile ventures were largely
limited to the coastal regions and were pursued by private entrepreneurs
and trading companies, with the East Indian companies as the primary
Western actors.
As the example of the Moluccan kingdoms suggests, it simply will not do
to see these polities conforming to immutable patterns of realpolitik.83 But
the example also suggests a general conclusion. Viewing the Southeast
Asian polities as essentially similar to modern sovereign territorial polities
misses the motives behind their actions and fails to clarify their behaviors.
9.4
The Galactic Polities: Uncivilized Other or a State
in the Law of Nations?
9.4.1
Positivist Legal Scholarship and Its Critics
Given the different logic of organization of Westphalian sovereign states
and the galactic polities of Southeast Asia what form did the early encounters between them take? The traditional narrative, developed largely on
the basis of positivist legal scholarship of the nineteenth century, avers
that such non-Westphalian polities were unwilling or unable to adapt to
norms of territorial sovereignty. Consequently, Western powers gradually
imposed their will and forced their views of modernity on the passive
recipients of Africa and the Orient.
The narrative of unidirectional expansion cannot stand, as the nature of
the agreements between Southeast Asian indigenous rulers and the
Western powers demonstrates. For centuries, many different actors
engaged in commercial and military exchanges, in which the Europeans
were usually the junior partners.84
How should we evaluate the numerous agreements between the colonial powers and their subsidiaries – such as the Portuguese Casa da Índia,
the English East India Company, the Dutch United East India Company
(VOC) – with indigenous rulers? Should they be construed as agreements
between similar types of actors? Can we regard both as “states” and
conceive of their relations as interstate treaties similar to agreement
between European polities?
83
84
For a critique of Realist and Neorealist views, see also Pye 1998, 4–5.
On the heterogeneity of actors across South and Southeast Asia, see Phillips and
Sharman 2015.
308
Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
As demonstrated in discussions of the East Asian tributary system and
the Islamic world, the positivist theory of international law resolutely
deemed non-European powers incompatible with the principles of the
Westphalian system. International law originated in Europe alone.
Although European entities (governments and semigovernmental entities
as the trading companies) had concluded agreements with indigenous
rulers for centuries, these agreements fell outside the scope of the Law of
Nations. The earlier pragmatic approach between European and Asian
powers was by the nineteenth century replaced by an exclusivist
approach. Since Asian and African states did not meet European standards of civilization they could not participate as equals in the Law of
Nations.85 In contradicting the natural law view of common standards
and norms, the colonial empires excluded much of the non-European
world. Difference meant incompatibility. Only those states that gradually
adopted European standards of civilization might be included in this
Westphalian system and recognized as sovereign equals. Compatibility
demanded homogeneity.
By the mid-twentieth century the positivist legal view became increasingly controversial. Contrary to the positivists, scholars championed the
universal origins of international law. Charles Alexandrowicz, while recognizing the differences between the Dutch and Portuguese legal positions,
nevertheless concluded that seventeenth-century scholars already regarded
the Southeast Asian polities as participants in the Law of Nations. “Be that
as it may, Freitas agrees with Grotius that the East Indian world entered the
community of the Law of Nations through treaty-making, alliances and
other transactions.”86 Others have argued the same: “Thus, the notion of
a differentiation in treaty-making capacity in terms of cultural or religious
background does not find support in state practice.”87 In other words, the
East Indian polities were full legal subjects.
These contrasting legal perspectives found expression in a ruling by the
International Court of Justice (ICJ). In 1960, the ICJ was asked to rule on
a dispute between Portugal and India regarding the right of passage between
the enclaves that made up Portuguese Goa. Even though this ruling pertained to South Asia rather than Southeast Asia, it sheds light on how the
interaction between the indigenous rulers and the colonial powers was
conceptualized by the relevant parties and international legal discourse.
85
86
87
Keene 2002, 2006.
Alexandrowicz 1969, 469. Seraphin Freitas had argued in his De Iusto Imperii
Lusitanorum imperio asiatico adversus Grotii Mare Liberum that the Iberian domination of
the seas was justified, contrary to Hugo Grotius’s position. Alexandrowicz 1967, chapter 5.
Orakhelashvili 2006, 333.
Interstate Relations and the Encounter with Colonial Powers
309
The Portuguese relied on the Treaty of Poona and on two decrees by
the Maratha ruler in 1783 and 1785 and argued the ruler had conferred
sovereignty over the enclaves to the Portuguese.88 India submitted that
the Treaty of 1779 was not validly entered into and that it had never
become a treaty in international law. The ICJ decided that the agreement
had conferred feudal title to Portugal but not sovereignty.89 From the
court’s perspective the Maratha kingdom had not been a sovereign entity
under international law at the time of the accord with the Portuguese and
thus could not have conferred sovereign rights by treaty.
Alexandrowicz, however, followed the argument made by dissenting
judge Quintana, and extended the argument beyond the Maratha state to
the polities of South and Southeast Asia:
We must reach the conclusion that the Maratha State was endowed with international personality in the 18th-century Family of Nations, and that, if this was so,
other States in a similar position, such as the Mogul Empire or the Kingdoms of
Ceylon and Burma or the Indonesian States, were not in a legal vacuum but had
participated since the 16th century in that universal community of the Law of
Nations . . . spreading from Europe to the East Indies and to parts of Africa.90
Alexandrowicz thus argued for the universal applicability of international norms and rules, which had been denied by the colonial powers in
the nineteenth century. Rejecting the older, positivist legal view that
agreements between Western states and “uncivilized” non-Christian
powers could not be construed as treaties under modern international
law, he thus opined that “. . . some of the East Indian Powers dealt with
the European Powers up to the end of the 18th century on a footing of
equality.”91 Alexandrowicz, going even further, stated that both entities
dealt with similar conceptualizations and understandings of authority
and contracting. The notion of Westphalian sovereignty was similar to
the East Indian understanding. “It was in this area (even after Islamic
penetration) that the idea of the Ruler’s sovereignty proved reconcilable
with the requirements of inter-State intercourse on a footing of
equality.”92
88
89
90
92
The Maratha kingdom emerged in the first half of the eighteenth century as a major rival
of the Mughals and displaced the latter from many of their territorial holdings.
International Court of Justice 1960. See also Andaya 1978, 275–76. In the end the ICJ
nevertheless held in favor of Portugal, arguing that since the British had claimed sovereignty over India and had recognized Portuguese claims as sovereign rights, India was
now obligated to do so as well.
Alexandrowicz 1969, 468. 91 Alexandrowicz 1969, 467
Alexandrowicz 1967, 17. He suggested as well that the principle could be traced back to
Kautilya. “The idea of sovereignty . . . was deeply ingrained in the Asian tradition . . . The
elements of sovereignty had been defined by Kautilya in his treatise Arthashastra.”
Alexandrowicz 1967, 28. Puzzlingly, he deemed that China could not define such
310
Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
R. P. Anand, focusing on the maritime commerce of Southeast Asia,
concurred with Alexandrowicz. Arguing that shared principles governed
the region’s maritime commerce from the eighth through the sixteenth
centuries, he submitted that Southeast Asia constituted an independent
state system with well-developed rules of interstate conduct.93
Gertrudes Resink made similar claims with regard to the Dutch relation
with the Indonesian rulers.94 Resink argued that Dutch control and influence over the East Indies was vastly overstated by nationalist historiography.
Indeed, as he pointed out the name Indonesia was only coined by English
scholars in 1850.95 He asserted that as late as 1870–1910 there still existed
a multitude of independent principalities and states in Indonesia.
Agreements between the colonial government and those polities were
regarded as treaties, and their inhabitants were regarded as foreigners.
Dutch jurisdiction amounted to control only over Java and the
Moluccas.96 Colonial administration over the areas beyond those was thus
based on the principles of the Law of Nations, as equals.97 The Dutch only
expanded beyond their directly held colonial possessions – Java and the
Moluccas – to those areas with which they previously had treaty-like
arrangements after they withdrew from their Onthoudingspolitiek (abstention policy) in 1894, following the Lombok War.98 Thus for almost four
centuries the Dutch were dealing with “. . . states which were juridically
foreign territory with nationalities of their own, realms with their own
maritime jurisdiction, princes with whom envoys were exchanged, and
nations for which explicit exception had to be made in the clauses of
Dutch commercial treaties with third powers.”99
Likewise, Ger Teitler asserts that until the late eighteenth century,
Indonesian rulers and the Dutch in practice worked on a basis of political
equality and both understood the nature of such agreements. “As the
Western and East Indian parties learned to treat each other at this time as
political equals – as exemplified in the legally binding treaties they
sovereignty, because China’s rule was based on political and cultural domination through the
tributary system.
93
Anand 1981, 443.
94
Otto, Dekker, and de Waaij note how the “Resink thesis” became a major topic in the
legal debates regarding Dutch colonial rule in the postwar decades. Otto et al. 1994.
95
96
Resink 1968, 109.
Resink 1968, 42–43; van der Kroef 1958, 364–66.
97
Reid argues that Resink’s later publications retreated from the view that the agreements
between the Dutch and indigenous rulers should be understood as agreements between
sovereign states. Instead, Reid argues, Resink shifted more to the view that they constituted vassal-like relationships. See his review in Reid 1968, 555–58.
98
V. Korn supports Resink on this point and argues that even in the directly controlled
areas, there was still a perception that local rulers were contractually connected to the
Dutch government rather than simply subservient. Korn 1957, 18, 23.
99
Resink 1968, 143.
Interstate Relations and the Encounter with Colonial Powers
311
concluded – the first must have known the relevant juridical notions of their
counterparts.”100
And indeed, the VOC painstakingly drafted agreements in Dutch and
in the languages of the indigenous rulers, referring to them as “Kings” and
referring to the accords as “Treaties.”101 In this perspective, and contrary
to the positivist legal view, the polities of Southeast Asia were compatible
with the Westphalian system and, indeed, as legal subjects they were not
all that distinct. Just as European states were sovereign entities that could
contract with one another, the Southeast Asian polities could enter into
treaties. They were part of the Law of the Nations.
The high level of interaction and the numerous agreements indicate
that the Southeast Asian polities were hardly passive recipients in the face
of encroaching Europeans. Mutual adaptation and cultural exchanges
had taken place well before Europeans started to assert formal control
over the region in the nineteenth century. European private actors and
public governments, Southeast Asian merchants and rulers, all signed
agreements and were able to deal with a great deal of heterogeneity among
the contracting parties.102
The older positivist legal position is thus clearly not tenable and has been
resoundingly refuted. Indeed, as I argued in earlier chapters, positivist
international law served to further the interests of the colonial powers.
Standards of civilization and religious and ethnic biases conspired to
make international law an instrument of European imperialism.103
However, rejection of the older legal positivist view should not lead to
the conclusion that these treaties were agreements between identical
entities. To argue that both could enter into contracts with one another,
that is, to argue that both parties had legal personality, does not mean that
they operated in the same conceptual space. The notion of legal equality,
as already noted, was not part of the discursive and conceptual framework
of Southeast Asian galactic polities.
9.4.2
The Danger of Normalizing the Southeast Asian Polities
For all their insights, I caution against reading the arguments by
Alexandrowicz and others as implying that the Southeast Asian polities
100
101
102
103
Teitler 2003, 64, emphasis mine.
See, e.g., the text of the agreement between the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and
Sultan Mandar Shah of Ternate. Treaty, CCIV, Molukken-Ambon, January 31, 1652.
Reprinted in Heeres 1907–38, vol. 2, 37–42.
As Phillips and Sharman argue, “before Europeans intruded into other world regions,
diversity seemed to be the default, often in terms of empires and subordinate tributaries
and protectorates with shared, overlapping authority.” Phillips and Sharman 2015, 217.
Anghie 2004.
312
Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
were covered by the Law of Nations because they were similar to
European states. Positivist international law denied that Southeast
Asian polities were covered by the Law of Nations because they were
uncivilized and dissimilar. Conversely, if one argues they were covered by
the Law of Nations, one might by extension conclude that these polities
should be regarded as similar to European states.
However, one need not conclude that the Southeast Asian polities had
similar identities as European actors in order to argue that the Law of
Nations extended to them. In other words, there is a danger that the
counterpositivist narrative lends itself to a Eurocentric homogenization of
differences, even though this is hardly what Alexandrowicz and others
intended. Since Alexandrowicz’s argument emphasized relations in the
Dutch East Indies, studying that case proves to be illustrative.
Examining the VOC’s agreements with the indigenous rulers shows
that the argument for the universal applicability of international law, as
championed by Grotius, was not without instrumental calculations. For
example, Resink notes that seventeenth-century Dutch government officials, such as the Governor of the Moluccas Padtbrugge and GovernorGeneral Speelman, deliberately based their arguments on Grotius’s
works, which viewed non-Christian polities as covered by the Law of
Nations. From this, Resink concludes that, since international legal
agreements were possible between Christian and non-Christian states,
the accords between the Dutch and the indigenous polities should be
regarded as contracts between sovereigns on the basis of juridical
equality.
But the apparent view of legal equality obscures the asymmetric relations that dominated these agreements. The VOC had legal preponderance in many such accords from the early seventeenth century onward.
While these agreements might be construed as falling within the Law of
Nations, indigenous rulers often had to recognize Dutch supremacy,
giving the Dutch unilateral rights to intervene in their domains. Hence,
the parties were de facto and de iure not equal. Even though the Dutch
did not exercise formal control, this situation did not constitute recognition of indigenous rulers as independent and sovereign. Rather than
respect for indigenous autonomy, more mundane reasons might have
motivated the Dutch choice for indirect rule, such as a desire to keep
the costs of empire low.104 Harry Benda reaches a similar conclusion.
104
Van der Kroef 1958, 366–69. Following the legal scholar Hans Kelsen, he notes that
even if the indigenous polity is given domestic autonomy, the status as a vassal or
protectorate does not amount to sovereign standing under international law. Van der
Kroef 1961, 241.
Interstate Relations and the Encounter with Colonial Powers
313
Whatever the wording and tenor of treaties or contracts, there was not, in modern
times, ever a question of equality between Hollanders and Indonesians: whatever
sovereignty Indonesian potentates may have possessed (or retained), it was what
might be called “residual,” always circumscribed by the present or hidden reality
of Dutch power.105
Moreover, the Dutch tactically used European legal concepts in their
treaties with the indigenous rulers partially to make the agreement
binding on third parties, as for example, in their accord with the
Sultan of Ternate, one of the key Moluccan spice islands. The Dutch
asserted that the indigenous ruler had consented to “leenverhoudingen”
(roughly, a fief relationship) with the Dutch but with the retention of
sovereignty. Given his “sovereign” status he thus had the right to make
sovereignty claims against third parties. Substantively, the treaty with
the Sultan of Ternate prohibited contracts with other states than the
Dutch.106 The Dutch thus used international law instrumentally to
claim that indigenous sovereignty prohibited English encroachment on
the East Indies.107 In other treaties rulers were prohibited from having
relations with “Europeans, whether Spaniards, Portuguese, French,
English, Danes, Swedes, Ostende Company personnel,” and included
prohibitions on relations with other Indonesian rulers as well, such as,
“Makassarese, Buginese, Mandarese . . . Javanese, Achenese.”108
Strategic calculations by the Dutch, in addition to their limited material
capability to impose their will unilaterally, thus informed their claim that
indigenous rulers were sovereign rulers.109 However, when the material
imbalance started to favor the Dutch, the notion of juridical equality was
altogether cast aside. When it was deemed necessary to advance their
interests, the Dutch denied the initially granted political and juridical
“equality,” as was the case when it came to coastal jurisdiction. By the
late nineteenth century, British and Australian firms became interested in
exploiting the coastal waters of the Indonesian archipelago. The question
thus arose as to who had jurisdiction over the territorial sea: the Dutch
105
106
107
108
109
Benda 1970, 135.
Agreement VOC and Sultan Mandar Shah of Ternate. Treaty, CCIV; see Heeres
1907–38, vol. 2, 41.
Resink 1979, 359. Also see Resink 1987, 550–51.
Generale Nederlandsche Geoctroyeerde Oost-Indische Compagnie 1602–1800,
Document DCCXCII, Molukken-Noord Celebes, December 31, 1731, in Stapel
1938, 127 (my translation).
Another ulterior motive to grant the indigenous ruler sovereign status derived from the
Dutch objective to recruit troops from the indigenous rulers in exchange, as they had
obtained from the Madurese. The exulted status of the Madurese ruler notwithstanding,
the relationship was rather that of “the Dutch suzerain, who bestows titles and honors on
the Madurese rulers for his own calculated reasons, and who withdraws them at his own
pleasure.” Van der Kroef 1961, 261.
314
Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
colonial government, or the indigenous principalities? The outcome of
the case left nothing in doubt. The Minister of Colonial Affairs argued
that international law could only be the product of intercourse between
Christian, civilized states and denied that the principalities had been
sovereign.110 This case suggests the flaws in Resink’s argument. He
argued that the self-governing territories had possessed coastal jurisdiction over territorial waters, thus demonstrating their sovereign status.111
To return to Alexandrowicz’s argument that such accords were similar
to treaties, the colonial powers in general used multiple terms as protectorate, colony, condominium, suzerainty. This in itself contradicts the
notion that the indigenous rulers were granted full legal sovereignty.
These polities were considered legal subjects, that is, they were considered to have legal personality, the ability to sign agreements and incur
rights as well as obligations, but they were not sovereign.112
I thus suggest that both parties operated within different discursive
universes. The agreements meant different things to each party and
they performed different roles in their respective spheres. Leonard
Andaya makes this point in his analysis of the accords between the
VOC and the rulers of South Sulawesi.113 The Dutch viewed the
written agreements as standard protocol, contracts that enabled commercial exchange. Conversely, indigenous rulers saw agreements as
oaths. For them, the content of the agreements lay more in oral
statements than in text. The accords operated within a context of
personal relationships with rank and importance based on the gradations in the personal network. Thus, for indigenous rulers the agreements granted rights to the Dutch but did not abrogate the
indigenous populace’s inalienable rights (e.g., the right to maintain
local adat rule and to choose one’s ruler).114 Andaya submits that
these divergent understandings between Europeans and Asians were
common, and not unique to Sulawesi.
Geertz’s analysis of the Balinese negara state suggests a similar conclusion. “Nor were the treaties so terribly binding as documents, or directed
toward such politically central issues as to provide a structural backbone
for a genuine ‘international’ polity. They were as purely ceremonial, in
their juridical way, as were politesse, gift exchange, and cosmopolitan
worship.”115
110
113
114
Teitler 2003, 66–69. 111 Butcher 2008. 112 Kämmerer 2006, 407.
The VOC’s economic interests and the political objectives of the States General had
essentially been fused by the reorganization of the VOC in 1602. The board of directors
(the Heeren XVII) and the Dutch oligarchy most often pursued the same policy.
Steensgaard 1974, 126–31.
Andaya 1978. 115 Geertz 1980, 41.
Interstate Relations and the Encounter with Colonial Powers
315
Two processes are at play in such instances. Both parties in contact
zones are embedded in their own respective language games. At the same
time, both parties also seek to deploy language as a means to achieve
a certain objective. In this case, by classifying the indigenous rulers as
Sovereigns, and Kings, and denoting the agreements as Treaties, the
Dutch deployed language to bring the indigenous rulers into their own
contextual framework, on terms understood and preferred by the
Dutch.116
The importance of protocol and ritual form lends further support to
Andaya’s position. While the Dutch were concerned with the detailed
and exact description of obligations and rights, the Indonesian indigenous rulers were relatively unconcerned with the content of the
formal texts. They realized these were simply expressions that hinged
on the exercise of power by the Dutch, and thus might be abrogated as
material fortunes shifted.117 By contrast, proper form and etiquette
were considered critical. For example, rulers would find affront if the
wrong color lacquer had been used in a seal. Dutch administrators were
also sometimes perceived to have magical powers.118 Performativity
was critical.119
We can assume that scholars such as Alexandrowicz, Resink, and
others were interested in dispelling the egregious claims of positivist
international law and the racist categories of alleged civilizational superiority. In demystifying the argument that colonial expansion had been
a totalizing effort that displaced all before it, they rightfully highlighted
the dyadic interaction of both parties.
However, by viewing both actors as states operating within the same
legal and discursive universe, they implied that recognition as a legal
subject must be premised on similarity, that is, both sides should be
viewed a sovereign entities. However, that perception constitutes another
version of Eurocentricity, even if driven by more laudable normative
concerns. Van der Kroef observes that Resink does scholarship a service
by bringing in indigenous voices as equals, but,
In attempting to bring out the Indonesian role more fully he has recourse to the
same Europe-centric view which, in a sense, he is anxious to avoid, namely the
view of the law of nations of nineteenth and early twentieth century Dutch and
other jurists, statesmen and publicists.120
116
117
119
120
On the dialectical nature of language games, see Rogers 1990, 268.
Van der Kroef 1961, 263. 118 Korn 1957, 21, 25, 26, 30.
The European merchant companies understood the need to appear as if they were direct
representatives of European sovereigns and thus set up quasi-royal courts.
Alexandrowicz 1967, 37.
Van der Kroef 1961, 265.
316
Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
I argue that Western and indigenous actors involved were working within
different collective beliefs. The observational reality of signed accords
obfuscates how these actors operated in divergent contextual realms –
indeed, they were part of distinct language games through which they
understood the action in question. The collective beliefs of the Southeast
Asian polities should not be construed as similar to the discursive field of
European Westphalian states. The relation of ruler to his society, the
critical importance of personal networks, the particular means of acquiring
merit, the fluidity of boundaries – all should give us pause before we suggest
that both parties operated within a shared cognitive landscape.
9.5
Adjusting to Western Challenges
9.5.1
Mapping the State: Siam Transformed
By the middle of the nineteenth century the European powers had
acquired increasing military, administrative and technical capabilities
and sought to incorporate the Southeast Asian polities in their maritime
empires. At that point they switched to a territorial policy of outright
annexation.121 Prior to that the European powers had to confine themselves largely to coastal entrepôts. Consequently, unlike the situation with
the Qing Empire, Tokugawa Japan, or the Ottoman Empire, few independent galactic polities were left by the mid-nineteenth century to confront the European powers. Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Burma,
Indonesia, and Malaya were colonized and only Siam (Thailand) managed to maintain its formal independence.
Given that Siam alone escaped colonization it provides insights into
how it dealt with the colonial powers that surrounded it, despite the fact
that its collective imagination was so different from that of the sovereign
territorial state model. As with other galactic polities, Siam contended
with overlapping spheres of influence and lacked any notion of fixed
territorial borders.122 And, as other galactic polities, since authority
attached to people rather than territory and given that claims to authority
overlapped with rival claims, regional elites could be beholden to multiple
rulers that claimed suzerainty. The allegiances of such regional elites were
fluid, particularly those in the frontier regions. Regional elites had many
121
122
The Dutch East India Company was thus disbanded by the late eighteenth century, with
the Dutch government taking control thereafter. See van den Doel 1996, 12. The British
East India Company would last until 1858, although arguably its powers had declined
decades earlier. See James 1994, 230.
On the Siamese indifference to borders and their annoyance with British inquiries
regarding the border between Burma and Siam, see Englehart 2001, 58.
Interstate Relations and the Encounter with Colonial Powers
317
opportunities to break from the core polity, given that the mandala system
conferred substantial autonomy to regional centers.123
Martin Stuart-Fox shows that Siam still conducted its intrapolity and
interpolity relations on the basis of a mandala system as late as the nineteenth century.124 South and Central Laos recognized Siam as their
suzerain and paid it tribute. However, this positioned the Laotian rulers
between two powers with divergent concepts of statehood and interstate
relations. On the one hand, they were part of the Siamese mandala
configuration. On the other hand, they fell under the Vietnamese sphere
of influence even before the French colonized Vietnam. The Vietnamese
concept of the state corresponded more closely with the Sino-centric
model. It differed from the galactic polities in its Confucian heritage,
and formed part of the Chinese tributary system. Consequently,
Vietnam possessed a greater degree of bureaucratic administration and
centralized authority and it was more open to the concept of territorially
defined authority that the West was advancing.
Given these overlapping spheres of influence, the Laotian border
regions played Vietnamese claims to overlordship and Siamese suzerainty
against each other. As a result, even the Vietnamese had to allow for some
flexibility in border arrangements and thus softened their demands for
exclusive control over Laos.
French imperial expansion in the late nineteenth century changed this
situation. The French increasingly pushed for the delimitation and
demarcation of formal borders by surveying the territories and erecting
border markers between Indochina and Siam. Siam in turn hired an
English surveyor, James McCarthy, to determine its borders so as to
counter French claims to the Lao territories.125 As a result, several
treaties with France and England preserved Siam’s independence, but
at the expense of the formalization of its borders and a loss of some
territories to the European powers. “Together these developments
marked the transition from Siam as mandala, to Siam as a member state
in a European defined and dominated world system.”126 The mandala
123
124
125
126
Englehart is somewhat critical of the notion of “galactic empire.” He concedes that the
notion of galactic polities is relevant at the cosmological level, but emphasizes that there
were practical reasons as well to relegate administrative functions to local levels.
Englehart 2001, 80–81. That said, he also notes that Thai reforms succeeded in the
nineteenth century because Siamese kings had particular resources at their disposal.
“One key resource was their supreme position in the karmic hierarchy that defined social
relations within Siam” (108).
Stuart-Fox 1994, 136–38.
Stuart-Fox 1994, 139, 141. Benedict Anderson elegantly describes how the Siamese did
not quite grasp the concept of artificial border lines until the 1870s. Anderson
1991,170–72.
Stuart-Fox 1994, 141.
318
Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
configuration thus remained relevant in Siam and Laos until the late
nineteenth century, at which point the European colonial powers dismantled it.127
9.5.2
The Longue Durée of Collective Imagination
Despite all the internal and external challenges that befell the Southeast
Asian polities from circa 1500 on, long-held collective beliefs and their
manifestation in the galactic polities were not fully displaced.
Cosmological-political schemas remained relevant within the Southeast
Asian polities for centuries after the first arrival of European powers. The
galactic structure of the polity endured, but in a more integrated form. As
Neil Englehart shows, while Siam’s galactic organization gradually gave
way in the nineteenth century, important elements of its cultural heritage
continued to influence Thai politics. While profound changes in institutions and political culture were taking place, he notes that, “The reforms
of King Chulalongkorn [1853–1910] conserved much of the traditional
Siamese political culture in a way that made the process of change
proceed more smoothly.”128
Indeed, the spatial logic, in which the center epitomized not merely
political power but a cultural hierarchy as well, significantly influenced
how Siam interacted with the West. Impressed with the West’s technological and material capabilities, Siamese elites were eager to embrace
many things European – particularly those of Britain. They appropriated
the Western notion of civilization, siwilai, a transliterated concept from
the English word civilized, and used it widely in public discourse. The
Siamese elites then commenced to catalog, describe, and display the
peoples that populated their territory, similar to how the colonial powers
described and cataloged non-Western peoples. In so doing the Siamese
elites likewise created a categorization of “Others,” in distinction from
their “Selves.” However, they did so under the influence of the older
cosmological geography in which spatial classification corresponded with
civilizational classification. Proximity to the center implied civilizational
superiority. By contrast, spatial distance implied inferiority. Those far
from the Siamese capital were considered strange, uneducated, and barbaric. Since London was conceived as the new exemplary center it constituted the apex of civilizational standard that should be emulated.
Bangkok thus aimed to be a replicative center. Bangkok (Krung Thep)
stood to its provinces as London stood to Bangkok.
127
Chutintaranond 1990, 97.
128
Englehart 2001, 103.
Interstate Relations and the Encounter with Colonial Powers
319
The compatibility between the two epistemic concepts provided the possibility for
the ideas of comparative siwilai space to be appropriated into local consciousness.
Whereas the traditional categories of spiritual geography informed the position of
Siam in the religious world view, the geography of siwilai informed the modernizing Siam of its position in the new world order.129
Siam was not unique. Even in those polities that eventually fell to the
colonizing powers, the relevance of the Hindu-Brahmanic principles
continued well into the nineteenth century. Harry Shorto describes how
the traditional Burmese administrative divisions of thirty-two units,
which emerged a millennium ago, were still being applied in the early
nineteenth century.130 Similarly, the Catholic priest Father Sangermano
observed that the Burmese population in 1885 continued to adhere to
a view of superior, middle, and inferior worlds, with man inhabiting the
middle world. Mt. Meru occupied the center with the world having
a quadripartite division of four islands in the cardinal directions. The
spirit world was controlled by one supreme lord with thirty-two vassals.
This supreme lord resided in a squared city with his throne in the center,
with thirty-two lesser lords on thrones surrounding him.131
Old patterns also continued to refract the impact of economic forces.
There is little doubt that commercial activity increased throughout
Southeast Asia from the late fifteenth century forward. Kings and other
powerful lords appropriated commercial resources to strengthen their
position. However, unlike in other regions, a merchant capitalist class
did not emerge. This was partially due to the particular political configuration of most Southeast Asian polities. Although the king’s position
became more secure, the traditional patron-client network, so typical of
the galactic polity, only became more entrenched, and those within it
benefited at the expense of an independent mercantile class. “The dependence on political patronage for nearly everything that mattered – land,
commercial privileges, security, and inheritance of title and property –
ruled out opportunities for the development of a separate bourgeois
merchant class.”132
Long-standing collective imagination continued to hold sway into the
contemporary period.133 Stanley Tambiah argued that understanding
Thailand in the 1960s and 1970s required an understanding of early
129
130
132
133
Winichakul 2000, 537. He suggests that Jambudipa (India) and China before colonialism, and the United States after World War II, occupied similar positions in the Thai
mentality.
Shorto 2002, 186–87, 190. 131 Alkire 1972, 485.
Kathirithamby-Wells 1993, 142.
To give two examples of the resonance of older conceptual frames, the Thai name for
modern-day Bangkok is Krung Thep, with its full name consisting of more than 100
characters. The name refers to the city created by the God Indra and the seat of the king.
320
Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
modern Thailand as well as Burma, Sri Lanka, and early India, given the
“existence of certain continuities and processes that are at work today as
in the past.”134 Similarly, in regard to contemporary Cambodia, GyallayPap suggested that the Sangha (the religious community and monks) and
particular claims to legitimate dynastic rule remained important reference
points for understanding political action despite all the influences during
and after Western colonization.135 Benedict Anderson maintained that
traditional conceptions continued to influence Indonesian politics in the
modern era.136 Jet Bakels and W. Boevink’s research on the Baduy community of West Java is similarly illuminating and indicated that the
community maintained many of its pre-Islamic traditions through selfisolation, and existed in this state until the 1980s. Furthermore, they
suggested the Baduy formed a mandala community, a religious (sacred
circle) community focused on ascetic principles, to maintain the harmonic cosmic order.137
For Clifford Geertz the idea of the exemplary center remained
a “matrix of supravillage political order.” Even after independence it
continued to play a role, for example, in the idea of pantja (five) sila
(principles), the national ideology that Sukarno, the first President of
Indonesia (1945–67), sought to popularize in the 1950s. It thus harkened
back to the old numerology and the five precepts of Buddhist thought.
Sukarno’s invocation of five principles of policy that were organically
linked (in theory) meant to elicit the idea of inclusion of multiple
traditions.138 Benedict Anderson, too, suggested that the traditional
beliefs regarding the spatial conceptualization of power informed modern
Javanese views of center and periphery. The legitimation strategies of
Sukarno and Suharto, the second President of Indonesia (1967–98),
capitalized on the conception that power had a center and that it was
realized in the person of a ruler who had forcefully seized power. Victory
in rebellion indicated wahyu, revealed divine support.139 Success and
merit were, and are, tautologically understood. Those who succeed
have merit. Those who fail clearly lack merit. Van der Kroef likewise
had noted that Sukarno’s Pantjasila aimed to forge a synthesis between
Islam, national ideologies and traditional communal perspectives – in
which religion, social, and political views were fused. Modern ideas,
134
135
138
Anderson 1990, 43, fn. 59. Likewise, Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn was
crowned in 2019 with “Buddhist and Brahmin rituals to symbolically transform him
into a living god.” See Patpicha Tanakasempipat and Panarat Thepgumpanat, “‘I Shall
Reign with Righteousness’: Thailand Crowns King in Ornate Ceremonies,” May 3,
2019, accessed at www.reuters.com.
See the review by Roger Harmon. Harmon 1979, 1042; and Tambiah 1976, 157.
Gyallay-Pap 2007. 136 Sastrapratedja 1984, 23. 137 Bakels 1989.
Geertz 1973, 225–26. 139 Anderson 1990, 39.
Interstate Relations and the Encounter with Colonial Powers
321
consequently, harkened back to “a broad and already existing cultural
and philosophical substratum.”140
In the same spirit, Amitav Acharya has convincingly shown how the
very idea of a Southeast Asian region finds its roots in the longue durée of
material practices and shared imagination.141 To understand region-wide
organizations as ASEAN one must start with Southeast Asia’s selfconception as a region.
And finally, as in the politics of East Asia today, particular historical
references have been deployed to achieve contemporary objectives. When
the government of Indonesia sought to justify its invasion of newly independent East Timor in 1975 it based its claims on a vision of Greater
Indonesia. That view in turn was inspired by the Javanese Majapahit
Empire of the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries, and to some extent by
the Sumatran Srivijaya polity (c. seventh to thirteenth centuries).142
In short, the Southeast Asian galactic empires were not frozen in time.
Rulers and society responded to the arrival of Islam, the appearance of
Western powers and, for the first time, the advent of truly global longdistance trading networks. However, long-held collective beliefs in how
the social and political order should be organized continued to influence
the responses to these new developments.
9.6
Conclusion: The Cultural Basis of Southeast Asian
International Society
Collective imagination formed the basis of Southeast Asian international
society. This society did not emerge by instrumental design but was based
on a shared ontological view of what the polity was, and what the polity
was for. Collective imagination provided a structural framework for
action. Whereas our conventional view of international society suggests
a set of deliberate rules that emerge from conferences and treaties,
Southeast Asian society was based on common foundational beliefs and
Hindu-Buddhist legacy, infused in multiple ways with local deities and
traditions.
Recognizing the almost infinite variations across the region, one can
nevertheless distill several common patterns. One such pattern expressed
itself in the nature of warfare. Overall, violence was common, though its
intensity seems to have been relatively low when compared to the high
frequency, increasing intensity, and scale of warfare in the European
theater. Some scholarship suggests that the capture of people was considered more important than territorial control. Moreover, since vassals
140
Van der Kroef 1954, 226.
141
Acharya 2012.
142
Eiran 2015, 98–99.
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Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
were easily seduced to switch their allegiance from one king to the next,
defection rather than fighting to the end seems to have been commonplace. Populations also transferred relatively easily into the conquering
polity.143
The model of galactic polities was quite distinct from the European
sovereign territorial entities that confronted them from the sixteenth
century forward. Galactic polities lacked notions of juridical equality
and spatially defined authority. Authority radiated out from the center,
diminishing over distance, but was in principle infinite in all directions.
With the arrival of the European maritime empires, the Western
powers layered onto, but did not eliminate, Southeast Asian preexisting
cognitive frames and preexisting rivalries. Western powers did play
a role in material balances of power, but against a particular understanding of what balancing might mean and against whom one should
balance – as we saw in the case of the Moluccan Islands. Indeed,
maintaining the cosmological balance could take precedence over the
material balance of power. The very understanding of each other’s
actions – what counted as a threat or a peaceful overture, what counted
as legitimate authority or unjust rule – occurred against a civilizational
framework that many distinct polities in the region shared. Thus, when
we consider what a treaty meant for indigenous rulers and external
powers, we need to consider the collective belief systems that informed
the actors involved.
At a minimum then, historical reflection reveals that international
relations hardly consist of immutable patterns of behavior. Of course
individuals across space and time encounter similar material facts of
life. In all civilizations, ethnographic studies reveal human concerns
about the welfare of one’s offspring; the existential reality of a finite lifespan; the joys of marriage; and concerns about the security of one’s
community. But the modalities through which individuals and social
groups understand these phenomena occur against the template of
a shared collective consciousness. There are multiple ways of “being
in,” and confronting, the world.
When the European maritime empires encountered the galactic polities
of Southeast Asia they did so as latecomers to a vast area of interstate
commerce and cultural exchange. At first, they sought to register these
encounters in the vocabulary familiar to them – by signing treaties,
classifying and mapping islands and groups, and ascribing titles to indigenous rulers while using European concepts. This started the first stage
of conceptual homogenization.
143
On this latter point, see Tambiah 1976, 121.
Interstate Relations and the Encounter with Colonial Powers
323
By the nineteenth century, asymmetric power opened new possibilities.
Homogenization could be coerced. Heterogeneity and difference were
the hallmark of uncivilized and barbaric polities who could thus be
excluded from international society and indeed denied the right of their
independent existence. The Southeast Asian “Other” served to define
European-ness and civilization.
Positivist international law exemplified this second stage of homogenization and normalization. The European sovereign territorial polity
exemplified the normal, the Asian or Islamic “Other” constituted the
deviant, the abnormal. As I discuss in Chapter 10, the process of normalization inevitably meant normation, the idea that the European standard
was not only the normal exemplar but should be the standard for others to
emulate and follow. Indeed, nonconforming polities should be brought to
that standard, even by force if necessary.
Both of these processes thus worked to define the European view of
“Self.” Whatever the nature of European states, whatever the legitimacy
of their democratic and authoritarian governments, they were not the
uncivilized despotic rulers, the “world conquerors” of the galactic
empires. European society was thus ordered and rationalized in contradistinction to the Southeast Asian oriental “Other.”144
The encounter of the Westphalian system with Southeast Asia thus
involved several moves of inclusion and exclusion. For one, it led to the
emergence of territorially circumscribed and spatially defined authority.
Sovereignty ends here and exactly here. It further involved the inclusion
and exclusion of what should count as the relevant political community.
No longer defined by kin or personal network, the community is to
become the nation; the new imagined community, so aptly described by
Benedict Anderson. Additionally, it involved the definition of who would
qualify as a member of international society. Criteria of fitness, defined by
the European and Western colonizers, defined which polities could be
actors on the international stage. Finally, the encounter with the West
came to define the exemplary state – not the exemplary state of the
galactic polities but the rational, bureaucratic Weberian state with its
monopoly of violence. It is the exemplar to which fragile and failing states
should aspire.
In short, historical Southeast Asia displayed a vastly different “international” society than what is usually understood and studied as international or regional order today. Southeast Asian political order was based
144
To be clear, as I noted in the discussion of Siam, I am not suggesting that this process
was simply unidirectional. Some indigenous elites, as elements in the elites of Siam,
came to see the European standard as desirable.
324
Collective Imagination among the Polities of Southeast Asia
on deep structural, shared notions of what constituted authority, who
could lay claim to authority, and how rule should be exercised. Actors did
not lack agency, but the structure of beliefs – the broadly shared understanding across this vast geographic region – influenced the parameters of
action.
This was not just government as bureaucratic administration, the exercise
of military power, the meeting out of justice, or the provision of collective
goods. Rulers were at once “world conquerors” and “world creators.” Just as
Mount Meru was the center of the universe where gods created and regulated humanity, so the king reflected a transtemporal and transspatial
authority. It was such rule that created the world. Rituals, architecture,
and control of the capital demonstrated a ruler’s ability to manifest divine
support and proved his status as a representation of Indra, the god who ruled
Mount Meru. If a ruler lost the ability to make his authority manifest, the
authenticity of his divine association fell into question.
No doubt individuals constantly interpret, reinterpret, and create their
social and political environment. But such actions occur against a shared
conceptual framework that gives meaning to those actions. This is as true
today as it was for the Southeast Asian polities, in which collective
imagination weaved Hindu-Buddhist cultural influences together with
local inflections.
The Southeast Asian galactic empires may strike us, as modern readers,
as alien, particularly readers who are scholars of contemporary international relations. The early modern Southeast Asian conceptions of society
and politics are so distinct from our contemporary understanding of
politics and international relations that they almost defy comprehension.
But the fact that they may strike one as alien is an insight in itself. Why?
It is because early modern Southeast Asian ideas do not conform to
contemporary conceptions and preconceptions of politics and international relations. That is, they radically differ from today’s understanding
of the interactions between states, or from our modernist views in which
the nation-state constitutes the most relevant political community.
Furthermore, modern social science tends to view politics as motivated
by the strategic calculus of rational actors. States and rulers pursue
military and monetary gains while evaluating the costs and benefits of
their actions. Warfare can be explained by the strategic evaluations of the
protagonists, rather than by the pursuit of honor, status, or revenge. (And
hence, some find comfort in the idea that, despite the existence of tens of
thousands of weapons of mass destruction, warfare is no longer rational,
and thus less likely.)
But Southeast Asia did not embody the Western pattern of a mechanically
ordered universe of atomistic parts. There the polity served to embody
Interstate Relations and the Encounter with Colonial Powers
325
a cosmological universe in which the whole was truly larger than the sum of
its parts. Studying these galactic polities thus forces one to recognize the
diversity of individual motives and aspirations across societies and history. In
addition, it inspires one to think about the bases of contemporary collective
imaginations regarding the nature of political order – what it is, and what it
might be.
10
Conclusion
Viewing the World in One’s Own Image
You take so much for granted when you study your own kind. You have
to de-familiarize yourself. You have to get the distance. You have to
realize you don’t understand.
Clifford Geertz
10.1
Introduction
August Kotzebue was a popular German play writer of the late eighteenth
century, demonstrated by one of his plays, Bruder Moritz. The play was so
popular that the Hof-und Nationaltheater in Mannheim, one of the most
prominent theaters, staged it more than 1,800 times between 1779 and
1870, dwarfing the number of performances of plays by Schiller (486)
and even Goethe (181). But what was truly remarkable was the content of
the play.
Bruder Moritz, the main character, argues for equality among races
and equality among men and women; he falls in love with his maid
who is of a much lower class than he is; Moritz has an Arab friend,
Omar; and Moritz suggests that his sister marries Omar. At the end of
the drama Moritz emigrates with his family and friends to the Palau
islands in the Pacific.
One might dismiss the play as escapist entertainment of the day. Or
more seriously, postcolonial critiques have argued that Kotzebue’s plays
display non-Europeans in a colonial fantastic style, thereby creating the
intellectual basis for later colonial expansion. However, as Chunjie Zhang
argues, in the end one must recognize that in Kotzebue’s plays, as well as
in performances by other artists at that time, non-Europeans are depicted
in a favorable light. Indeed, in Zhang’s perspective they are “active
participants who co-construct German discourse and a globally shared
network of values.”1
1
Zhang 2015, 3. See also Tautz 2009 on the German interest in plays as a means of
engaging the larger global world as a process of identity formation.
326
Conclusion
327
Kotzebue’s cosmopolitanism was arguably part of a broader European
trend. Pauline Kleingeld suggests that late eighteenth-century Germany
evinced various forms of cosmopolitanism. While it was not dominant, it
occupied an important position in emerging debates about German identity amidst increasing global connections.2 In France, Francois Bernier’s
travel accounts of the Mughal Empire influenced Bernard Picart and Jean
Bernard’s work on comparative religions that suggested all religions
should be given equal respect.3 And, as discussed in Chapter 6, Voltaire
spoke highly of Ottoman tolerance and civility.
But, if there was a window for cosmopolitan ideas in the German
territories, or in Europe more broadly, that window rapidly closed.4
Indeed, Kleingeld submits that by the first decade of the nineteenth
century, it had been displaced by nationalist ideas.5 Kotzebue himself
was assassinated by a nationalist student in 1819.
We might take the case of Kotzebue as symptomatic of a broader trend
that occurred throughout Europe. As seen in the previous chapters, in
earlier decades the European powers were interlopers among powerful
kingdoms and empires in the Middle East and Asia. Moreover, European
travelers and emissaries were keenly aware of their position, and often
marveled at the ability of Ottoman, Qing and other rulers to accommodate and integrate diverse religions and ethnicities. While there were
narratives of oriental despotism, at the same time there were other narratives, such as those extolling the remarkable tolerance of the Mughal
court under Akbar.
But with growing capabilities and increasing interaction Europeans
came to redefine themselves as well as to constitute an alien “Other.”
Cosmopolitan views were displaced by a new European self-identity as
the bearer of progress, modernity, and civilization. Non-European international societies were no longer just different, they were inferior, thus
justifying the colonial enterprise to follow.
This chapter briefly restates my account of how collective beliefs systems informed three prominent non-Westphalian systems. It is followed
2
3
4
5
Kleingeld 1999. She sees Kant as one of its strongest proponents, but other influential
figures championed the view as well. The naturalist George Forster (1754–94) sought to
develop a systematic and unbiased account of other cultures based on the travel reports of
Captain Cook and others. Others recognized the richness of cultural pluralism, market
cosmopolitanism, and moral cosmopolitanism. Kant’s philosophy, however, contains
multiple elements that complicate a straightforward reading of his cosmopolitanism. See
Kellner 2019.
Kinra 2013, 289.
Of course there were many rival discourses that emphasized Oriental despotism, most
famously expounded by Montesquieu. But those views were also challenged by contemporaries, such as Anquetil-Duperron, who had traveled to the Middle East. Venturi 1963.
Kleingeld 1999, 506, 524.
328
Conclusion
by a brief exposition of how interpretivist, historical analysis destabilizes
some conventional views of international relations scholarship, and suggests how modern perspectives have appropriated natural scientific metaphors to understand the social world. Most of this chapter is devoted to
making two main arguments.
First, the encounter with the non-Western world served to foster a
particular Euro-American sense of Self, in juxtaposition to an imagined
Other. In this sense the full articulation of the Westphalian system as it
emerged in the nineteenth century, the fusion of territory and the
nation, was made possible by the encounter with the non-West. The
perception of unidirectional expansion of European society, however,
obfuscated how Europeans were redefining their own societies in the
process.
Second, I argue in the last part of this chapter that the Euro-American
centric views of progress, modernity and civilization, defined the
Westphalian system and the nation-state as the desired norm. Even with
decolonization and empowerment of alternative voices, those views arguably still exert considerable influence. If nothing else historical self-reflection serves to question the Western nation-state as the “normal,” and as
the standard to emulate and impose. Studying other interstate societies
across history and space not only reveals the particular sets of collective
beliefs that informed their societies but also serves to reveal dominant
preconceptions of how the world hangs together in our time.
10.2
Collective Beliefs as the Basis of Political Order
and Interpolity Relations
I have argued in this book that international societies are based on
collective beliefs. The collective imagination, the mentalités collectives of
their populations, clarify how polities are organized, how authority is
legitimated, and how communities distinguish themselves from others.
Interstate societies exist when actors share collective beliefs about the
ontology of the system of which they are a part. These collective beliefs
define the nature of politics – what the polity is and what the polity is for.
Rulers and members of society act within a shared frame of reference
regarding what political authority should look like and how polities
should relate to one another.6
6
My perspective differs from conceptions of society that focus on the explicit agreements
between governments to establish norms and principles. It is thus less instrumentalist than
the perspectives of the early English School as articulated by Hedley Bull, as well as the
Neoliberal perspectives as expressed by John Ikenberry. See Bull 1977, 13; Ikenberry
2001, 23.
Conclusion
329
The collective belief system – the society’s political and social culture –
manifests itself in architecture, ritual displays, urban and administrative
designs, indeed in the very structure of the polity itself. In so doing, the
belief system plays a structural but not static role. It provides a cognitive
framework through which actors understand their world as well as their
own actions, what Geertz termed the “webs of significance.”7
Interstate societies do not necessarily entail sets of norms and rules to
limit conflict. Unlike definitions of international society that center on the
deliberate creation of norms and rules to limit violence, a given set of
collective beliefs might actually require violence under certain circumstances. Political order regulates when violence might be legitimate and
when not, and even when violence might be required to maintain the
specific social and political organization.8 For example, warrior societies
have specific norms and principles that constitute codes of honor.
Adhering to those principles might require combat or war.
A considerable body of social science scholarship, particularly in international studies, reflects a rationalist worldview in which rituals, performance, and cosmological beliefs have only limited significance. Behaviors
and policies are viewed as the result of rational calculation of material
costs and benefits. But that mode of explanation is itself preconditioned
by certain preconceptions and epistemological prejudices. Moreover, it
presupposes a particular, shared frame of reference of what constitutes
costs and what counts as benefits. By reflecting on how collective beliefs
have historically informed the political organization of polities in Europe
and the non-European world, one recognizes those modern preconceptions and prejudices.
None of my argument denies the relevance of material factors. No
doubt the distribution of power among polities, or the various levels
of economic and technological development, are important factors
that influence behaviors and policies. They provide constraints and
7
8
My views are similar to how Jacinta O’Hagan describes the processual approach to
civilizational analysis. “Civilizational identities are invoked as a means of locating individual or collective identities in broader temporal, geographic and cultural communities.
This may entail invoking shared histories, traditions, values, or qualities as language or
religion . . . that link diffuse peoples in a form of imagined community. Such invocations
produce and reproduce the community’s boundaries.” O’ Hagan 2017, 189.
Laust Schouenborg makes a similar point. He uses the concept of conflict regulation,
which can entail “aggressive warfare as well as peaceful means of settling disputes . . . war
might be the dominant mode of social interaction.” Schouenborg 2017, 86. Hämäläinen’s
account of the Comanche Empire, which eclipsed European imperialism in the Southern
Plains until the early nineteenth century, provides a fascinating account of how the
disparate bands of Comanches might on occasion fight each other but recognized common rules and norms that violence among them might be legitimate and indeed required
as part of their common identity. Hämäläinen 2008, 278–79.
330
Conclusion
opportunities for action. I argue, however, that collective beliefs are
themselves independent sources of power. Moreover, beliefs inform to
what end other sources of power, such as military and economic assets,
should be used. Hobson and Sharman rightly argue that collective
beliefs form a critical component for explaining state policies, as in
Britain’s imperialism of the nineteenth century. “It was not simply a
preponderance of material power that made imperialism inevitable. The
British (and others) engaged in imperialism not simply because ‘they
could’ (as materialists assume). Rather they engaged in it because they
believed they should.”9
For those who wish to deny the cultural basis of power, I simply recall
the power of the medieval Christian Church. How else can we account for
the ability of the Church to possess one-third of all arable land in France?
How else to account for its ability to command the construction of
majestic cathedrals when commoners lacked basic housing or food?
Surely this requires some analysis of the medieval mentalités collectives
through which medieval men and women understood their world. The
power of the church to define the ultimate purpose of life, its claims to
represent heaven on earth, its authority to order society into three castes,
and its ability to even determine the likelihood of salvation (a disconcertingly low 100,000 to 1) affected dispositions and material outcomes in
myriads of ways.10 If we can admit to this, then we must also concede that
deeply held cultural values and beliefs affected polities and regional
orders at other times and in other places, and that they did so in ways
that are not simply reducible to the possession of material resources.
I thus advance an alternative understanding of international societies
based on the role of shared beliefs and collective imagination. Contrary to
accounts that emphasize particular distributions of material power as the
sine qua non for international order, the three regional systems of the
preceding chapters demonstrate the causal significance of shared belief
systems. The civilizational complexes of the Islamic World, the East
Asian tributary system, and the Southeast Asian galactic empires evinced
different configurations in the distribution of power and yet each of these
regions possessed international societies.
David Kang has made a compelling argument that Confucian views
informed the political organization of the Chinese Empire, Korea, Japan,
and Vietnam, as well as the relations between them. Their shared views
regarding legitimate authority and rank order led to relative peace,
9
10
Hobson and Sharman 2005, 87.
For the discussion of the medieval mentalité collective, see Le Goff 1980; and Duby 1980.
The low number was deduced from the ratio of people saved on Noah’s ark versus the
number who perished. Le Goff 1988, 325.
Conclusion
331
particularly when compared to contemporaneous war-torn Europe.
Despite his significant insight, the material preponderance of the
Chinese dynasties makes it difficult to parse out the relative salience of
cultural versus material factors. In this sense the discussion of the Islamic
World and the polities of Southeast Asia provides the means to more
clearly delineate the causal importance of shared collective beliefs on the
nature of political order.
In the Islamic world no one power was dominant. Three major empires
commanded the region in the early modern era, with neither one hegemonic. Aside from the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires, other
significant entities existed as well. Despite a wide variation of ethnic,
racial and tribal markers, and despite the diverse influences of their
Turco-Mongol heritage, and even despite significant cleavages in the
interpretation and application of Islam, the Islamic world shared features
in common. In particular, the idea that Shari’a should inform political
and social life provided a lingua franca. There was a distinct international
society. Moreover, it constituted an international society without
hierarchy.
Southeast Asia provides an even starker example of the relevance of
shared collective beliefs. No hegemonic power ever arose to dominate the
region, even if there were multiple powerful empires. Moreover, unlike the
Islamic world, the region lacked a single monotheistic religion. Hindu and
Buddhist influences had long-standing influences. When Islam started to
expand its reach by the late fifteenth century it did so haphazardly. Some
areas, such as Java, were quite heavily influenced by its arrival. However,
even there the imprint of Islam would only start to take full effect by the
mid-nineteenth century. Some nearby islands, such as Bali, were, by contrast, hardly affected at all. Mainland agricultural Southeast Asia also
differed from areas that were more oriented toward maritime commerce.
And throughout the region older conceptual schemes maintained their
hold, refracted through myriads of local inflections. Nevertheless, a common logic of order prevailed. This logic was based on nonterritorial conceptualizations of authority derived from cosmological beliefs. Such beliefs
were prevalent throughout Southeast Asia, creating an international society
among the many Southeast Asian polities.
In the preceding chapters I have therefore articulated the logics of order
in the East Asian tributary system, the Islamic ecumene and the galactic
polities of Southeast Asia (in Chapters 4, 6, and 8). In each of these, a
definable pattern of beliefs and a shared conceptual framework ordered
society and politics. These beliefs, moreover, were not simply elite level
conceptions, at the plane of professed ideology. Instead, they provided
meaning and understanding at all levels of society, and manifested
332
Conclusion
themselves through material as well as symbolic practices. Critically,
these collective beliefs informed how actors construed notions of Self
and Other, with fluid categories of identity.
Within the three regional complexes, the understanding of society and
system differed fundamentally from the Westphalian idea of a system of
sovereign, territorial states. Consequently, when the European powers
arrived in Asia from the late fifteenth century forward, the non-European
polities placed the new arrivals in conceptual categories that were familiar
to them (Chapters 5 and 9). Likewise, the particular categorization of
non-Islamic polities influenced the views of Ottoman, Safavid, and
Mughal rulers vis-à-vis the European states (Chapter 7).
10.3
Beyond Mechanical Perspectives
In addition to arguing for the importance of studying the cultural bases of
international societies I make another key claim: studying non-Western
polities and regional orders allows us to examine Western-centric vocabulary and demystify the collective imagination through which Western views
order the world. In the positivist vocabulary of Structural Realism, states
are calculative actors impelled by mechanical “forces” to act in predictable
ways.11 Indeed, in the extreme, states resemble “billiard balls” that react
kinetically to others. This lexicon also aims to understand distant eras and
regions by universal and transhistorical laws. Yet, the positivist vocabulary
is itself the product of a particular collective consciousness that derives
from modern history and the European experience.12
The positivist stance leads to a preconceived reading of the empirical
record. It takes the European experience as indicative of the general
nature of international relations. In Europe, the lack of a continent wide
theocracy or empire led to a system of competing polities. Lacking hierarchy, war was frequent and ubiquitous. Extrapolating from this experience one can then derive general hypotheses, such as the claim that under
anarchy shifts in the distribution of power typically lead to war. Historical
cases are then supplied as corroborating evidence to indicate perennial
patterns. The Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE) and the Chinese
Warring States period (475–221 BCE) thus serve as examples to validate
the general hypotheses. Whether the participants themselves saw the
conflicts in those terms is regarded as irrelevant.
11
12
As Richard Ashley notes, “neorealist ‘structuralism’ takes a shallow, physicalistic form . . .
Within neorealism, I suggest, structuralism, statism, utilitarianism and positivism are
bound together in machine-like, self-enclosing unity.” Ashley 1986, 268.
Tim Dunne similarly links much of American Structural Realist and Neoliberal scholarship with positivism. Dunne 1998, 15–16.
Conclusion
333
Positivist bias also means that international relations theorizing should
be a search for law-like statements, not dissimilar to the practices of the
natural sciences. The term “realism,” particularly as used by Structural
Realists, yokes a political with an epistemological claim. It suggests that
its rendition of international politics shows the world as it “really” is.
An ahistorical stance tends to view the expansion of the Westphalian
system of sovereign, territorial states as a unidirectional European process. Developed in Europe, the logic of the Westphalian order was geographically and culturally imprinted on the rest of the world over the
course of four centuries in which the European colonial empires
expanded their reach. The non-Western regions passively and reluctantly
came to accept these principles under duress. However, as I have argued
in the preceding chapters, this modernist view of unidirectional influences
and resistant non-Western polities does not hold. The latter showed far
greater agency and Europe itself was affected in a bidirectional process in
which its own identity altered.
An articulation of how the siren song of the natural sciences captivated
scholars in social sciences is well beyond the ambitions of this book.
However, one cause might lie in the conceptual developments following
the medieval period. As the medieval collective mentality receded with
the Renaissance and Enlightenment, new grounds of understanding and
justification had to be found. In order to understand the social and
political world, theorists and political elites thus availed themselves of
new paradigms and concepts emerging from studies of the natural world.
Heikki Patomäki suggests that the Newtonian view continues to
influence such perspectives of contemporary international relations.
“The balance of power theory – originally based on an analogy of
Newton’s laws of physics, adopted by European courts in the early
eighteenth century to describe and prescribe their practices and mutual
relations – continues to be efficacious for instance in theories of unipolarity that assume that the US must be ‘balancing’ against everyone
else simultaneously.”13
In like manner, more recent scholarship has invoked notions of balancing equilibria, input-output models and has drawn analogies with thermostatic regulators.14 Material assets are conceived as the metaphorical
equivalent of physical forces, with states interacting with each other in
13
14
Patomäki 2008, 88. Tim Dunne also notes the interest of the early English School in the
Newtonian bases of modern international relations discourse. Dunne 1998, 123. See also
Watson 1992, 8.
See, e.g., Rosecrance 1963; Easton 1957; Khong 2013. On the importance of understanding the world through metaphors, see Lakoff 2011.
334
Conclusion
kinetic fashion. We often tend to see a world of clocks rather than
clouds.15
Our comprehension of politics thus emerges from the cognitive frames
that populate our times, as well as collective beliefs that we inherit.
Examining other historical periods and polities serves to question these
epistemological preconceptions. The scientific mind-set is itself a result of
a particular cultural trajectory. As Ben Rogers notes,
Skinner, following Berlin, argues that just like our ancestors of earlier epochs we
are constrained in our moral and political beliefs by the concepts and categories
which characterize our age. One way, perhaps the only really effective way, of
loosening the grip these conceptual paradigms have on us is by familiarizing
ourselves with historical systems of thought very different from our own. Seeing
ourselves in this way as “one tribe among others” can only make us less prone to
mistake our contingent and historically specific ethical convictions as timeless and
immutable.16
10.4
Defining the Community: Modes of Inclusion
and Exclusion
10.4.1 The Flexible Parameters of the Non-Western Systems
Throughout the Eurasian world, rulers legitimated their authority in
multiple ways. The dynasties that ruled China – ethnic Han and nonHan alike – availed themselves of a system of rank, ethics, and rituals,
based on Confucian philosophy and divine mandate. But they fused these
with motifs of Manchu, Mongol, and Tibetan origin. In a similar fashion,
the monarchs of the Islamic world shared a religious monotheistic base.
But they also referred to foundational myths and invoked the legacy of
archetypical leaders, the world conquerors. Islam provided a foundation,
but borrowed from the Turco-Mongol past. Southeast Asian elites linked
their authority claims to cosmological schemes, justifying their position as
conduits between the sacred and the profane. Hindu-Buddhist cognitive
schemes provided a shared template but here too elites fused their claims
to legitimacy with infinite local deities and indigenous customs.
In the Islamic domains, the Sino-centric tributary system, and the
Southeast Asian galactic polities, delimitation of the regional society
occurred not by spatial markers but by shared collective beliefs. Each of
these systems had a particular view of how political order connected to
geographic space, but the material expression was made to conform to the
conceptual perspective. Thus for the Chinese rulers, the empire occupied
15
Almond and Genco 1977.
16
Rogers 1990, 269–70.
Conclusion
335
a central position both conceptually in terms of the mandate from heaven
and as the center of the geographic world. Maps thus signified China in
this position. Southeast Asian polities likewise maintained a concentric
view with the dominant capital as the center of civilization. Levels of
civilization diminished with distance from the sacred center. Islamic
rulers held to a less concentric view but here too the area in which Islam
reigned (dar al-Islam) was deemed superior to lands not controlled by
Muslim rulers (dar al-Harb), with the lands with whom Muslim rulers
had a truce (dar al-Ahd) occupying an intermediate position.
But while each of these international societies held to a view of
civilizational superiority, their differentiation from other societies did
not hold to specified spatial parameters. Moreover, since their selfdefinition was based on a set of collective beliefs that could be interpreted and recast in multiple guises, inclusion in one’s community was
relatively open to others.17 Consequently, their populations consisted of
multiple religious, ethnic, and racial groups and rulers legitimated
themselves in multiple forms. The Chinese emperor could identify
himself as the embodiment of the sage Confucian ruler regardless of
whether he was ethnic Han. Or he could be a Mongol Khan, a Tibetan
boddhisatva, or Manchu warlord. The Ottoman emperor could claim to
be khalı̄f to his Muslim subjects (particularly after the conquest of
Mecca and Medina), but also basileus, the ruler of the Byzantine
Empire once he had taken Constantinople. Likewise the Southeast
Asian rulers could accommodate a bewildering array of ethnic groups
and deal with multiple languages, with many appropriating the title of
Chakravartin, the benevolent, enlightened world ruler.
As a result, these polities could deal with great heterogeneity.
Internally, although they operated with a dominant set of collective
beliefs, such as Islamic religion or Confucian philosophy, they could
accommodate doctrinal variations, and diverse racial and ethnic groups.
Indeed, exactly because they defined inclusion and exclusion in terms of a
syncretic belief system, they could include others, particularly if they
acquiesced to those beliefs, even if only in performance. Chinese chroniclers could thus regard the Dutch and Portuguese as part of the Chinese
tributary system because they had performed the kowtow and had paid
tribute. The Qing rulers, ethnic Jurchen (renamed the Manchu) could
become “Chinese” by performing the Confucian rituals on entering
17
Because Islamic doctrine interpreted the categories in various ways, the distinction of dar
al-Harb and dar al-Islam should not be overstated, as sometimes occurs in discussions
regarding Islamic fundamentalism. Some Islamic jurists argue that if dar al-Harb refers to
lands in which Muslims cannot freely practice their religion, then many countries in the
West would not be considered within the dar al-Harb.
336
Conclusion
Beijing. Likewise, the Ottoman millet system could accommodate nonMuslim communities. They epitomized hybridity, whereas the
Westphalian state system and the Western nation-state aspired to
homogeneity.
Externally as well, the boundaries of these empires defined identity and
difference in far less strict terms. None of these rulers justified their
authority as absolute control over a fixed territorial space. In principle
their authority spanned to all corners of the globe, even if it remained
receptive to local variations in the numerous agreements with lesser lords,
vassals, and tributaries. In practice boundaries, not borders, marked the
extension of their authority. The edges of such empires thus constituted
transition zones where cultures met, which were populated by peoples of
different ethnic and religious backgrounds.18 Spheres of authority thus
merged into each other.
10.4.2 Territorial Delimitation and the Identification of the Uncivilized
Other
Modern statist views elide the specific inflections of inclusion and exclusion involved in the process of defining sovereignty in territorial terms.
Whereas borders operate to distinguish the sovereignty of rulers by territorial and political limits, boundaries consist of immaterial and symbolic
parameters. In this sense the comparison of non-Western state systems
with that of the Westphalian order serves to highlight the contrast
between bounded communities, which share flexible notions of identity,
with the bordered identity that comes with territorial specification and
enclosure of the nation.
The articulation of borders rather than boundaries formalizes in stark
terms the definition of the relevant community, the “inside” from the
external “outside.” Sovereign authority stretches conceptually to the border, and not an inch beyond.19 On this side of the fence are Americans, on
that side, there are Mexicans, the community of foreigners.
Transforming the community of individuals that occupy the territory of
the sovereign state into the incipient “nation to be” requires the elimination of older forms of communal and personal ties and their reconstitution in an imagined community. It requires as well the erasure of multiple
cross boundary identities. Creating the sovereign state also entails the
appropriation of space and categorization of people. Mapping no longer
references to a biblical schematic with Jerusalem at the center of the
known world, but serves to delineate the territory that is claimed by a
18
On contact zones, see Pratt 1991.
19
Anderson 1990, 41–42.
Conclusion
337
community and to designate who is part of the community and who is not.
Mapping simultaneously involves measurement, the counting of subjects,
and specification of functions of that territory. Maps are created to show
geostrategic value, economic resources, infrastructure, and so on.
Cultural mapping superimposes on the geographic enterprise. Those
beyond the border are aliens, logically and necessarily subject to another
ruler, hence foreign and potentially dangerous. Movements across borders need monitoring, surveillance, and control. In the process cultural
evaluation and spatial configuration come to correspond, and come to
define, the borders of civilization itself. Winichakul speaks in this regard
of the geo-body of the nation. “The geo-body of a nation is a man-made
territorial definition which creates effects – by classifying, communicating, and enforcement – on people, things, and relationships.”20
The development of the Westphalian system consequently involved a
multipronged process of internal as well as external homogenization.
First, in each of the European states subjects were transformed into
citizens, members of the imagined nation. Peasants were made into
Frenchmen, to use Eugen Weber’s terminology.21 Second, at the continental level within Europe, territorial borders came to differentiate
political realms – French citizens were differentiated from English,
Dutch, and so on. National identity, the imagined community, became
fixed in space. A third dynamic of inclusion and exclusion involved the
differentiation from the non-European “Other.” Europe and more
broadly the West defined itself in opposition to the non-West, juxtaposing
the civilized and the uncivilized, differentiating the superior races from
the inferior.22
The self-defined civilized states of the West could thus exclude the nonWest as actors in the international system, epitomized by the international
legal positivism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Each of these
levels of identity formation – the transformation of subjects to citizens; the
differentiation of citizens versus foreigners; and the contrasting of civilized West versus the uncivilized non-European – influenced each other.
They were mutually constitutive.
The differentiation with the non-West also served in the ongoing
battles within European culture. Enlightenment and rationalist philosophy still were contending with long-standing religious and cosmological
beliefs. Some segments of society adhered to medieval beliefs well into the
eighteenth and even the nineteenth century. For example, as late as 1825
20
21
Winichakul 1994, 17. On the various practices of mapping, also see Boyle 2016; Fortna
2005; Karamustafa 1992; Smith 2013; Szcześniak 1954.
Weber 1976. 22 Bowden 2009, chapters 5–6.
338
Conclusion
the King of France, Charles X, still performed the ritual of the royal touch
to cure disease, particularly scrofula. Likewise cosmological and religious
views influenced the pursuit of science well into the eighteenth century.
The classification of other societies as retrograde and superstitious, could
thus serve to rationalize and discipline societies within Europe itself.23
Many analyses of the development of national identities in Europe have
emphasized internal dynamics. Benedict Anderson has thus rightly
pointed to the development of vernacular language and the printing
press. Others as well have stressed the impact of modernization and
emerging capitalism.24 The access for disenfranchised political elites
constituted another catalyst for nationalist mobilization.
However, focusing solely on the internal aspects of nation formation
misses the importance of the imagined external Other in defining the
national Self. Even when the importance of creating an external Other
is emphasized, as for example, Reinhard Bendix does, the emphasis goes
to conflicts among European powers. Thus, Bendix notes the creation of
English identity vis-à-vis the Spanish Other.25 The counter positioning
vis-à-vis the Oriental Other gets little attention.
In short, I have argued in these past chapters that European selfdefinition – both of individual states as well as Europe as a whole –
operated by counter posing European states to non-Western entities,
the modern bureaucratic rational state versus the Orientalized other.26
Hence the more European civilized society distinguished itself from the
Ottoman Empire or Chinese dynasties, the firmer the basis of the rationalized bureaucratically administered nation-state. From there it was
only a small step to assert Western views by colonial empire.
10.5
Normalizing Westphalia: Progress, Civilization,
and Empire
As the European polities started to expand their global reach from the late
fifteenth century onward, they initially did so as bit players. The
Portuguese and Spanish maritime empires, followed by the Dutch,
French, and English, confronted polities that were in many ways more
developed and more powerful than their own. In most parts of Eurasia the
various mercantile companies were largely relegated to coastal entrepôts.
In the Islamic world the Europeans had to rely on unilateral grants by the
Muslim rulers to establish chartered trading posts, the capitulations. The
23
24
Bloch 1961b, 226. On the influence of biblical scripture on the natural sciences, such as
geology, see Gould 1987.
B. Anderson 1990; Gellner 1983; Hobsbawn 1990. 25 Bendix 1978. 26 Said 1978.
Conclusion
339
Europeans styled their agreements with local rulers as “treaties” even if
they resembled a bewildering array of semifeudal relations. Normal and
abnormal had little meaning for actors operating in this heterogeneous
environment.
However, the European disposition started to change as the maritime
empires increased their ability to assert themselves. Importantly, the
metropolitan governments gradually displaced the private companies.
The Dutch East India Company (VOC) was taken over by the government in 1799. The French East India Company had ceased thirty years
earlier. The English East India Company continued for another half
century, but as it increased its territorial holdings it inevitably required
growing state intervention. Private pursuit of profit thus started to turn to
the public pursuit of empire.
Moreover, in Britain the traditional justification of empire, as an
empire of liberty, had also become problematic with the loss of the
American colonies. The American Revolutionaries’ counternarrative
lamenting the “long train of abuses” and their English sympathizers
gave lie to that claim. These developments thus “appeared to demand a
serious rethinking of the nature of empire.”27 A novel public justification
for empire was needed. Juxtaposition with an uncivilized Other provided
one means to do so.
Rationalization of law and administration in Europe thus occurred in
competition with European rivals, as well as in contradistinction from
non-European polities. The Other could now be reconstituted as the
abnormal who did not meet the standards of civilization defined by the
West. The Islamic and Oriental Other, provided dual means of differentiation. The inferior Other served to highlight the unique character of any
given European state. But it also served to demarcate European identity
on a wider scale. European civilization as a whole could be construed as
superior to all Others.28
That many European practices were in fact influenced by those same
polities mattered little in the conceptual framing of the Other as inherently distinct and inferior. Indeed, denying dynamism and innovation,
and denying non-European origins of “progress” only served to accentuate the European self-image. This provided the means to distinguish the
normal from the abnormal. European states were the normal, the Other
the abnormal.29
27
28
29
Travers 2007, 5. As he notes as well, “India became a crucial site for generating new
British identities and ideas of the state” (13).
Bowden 2009, chapter 3; O’Hagan 2017, 190–95.
As John Hobson articulates, “states tend to create the appearance of a threatening ‘other,’
against which the ‘self’ is defined negatively. In constructing an ‘other,’ that appears
340
Conclusion
Consequently, Non-European polities could be regarded as legal subjects, who could sign treaties and confer title to European powers (and
trading companies). Yet at the same time the standard of civilization
allowed for their exclusion as sovereign entities. They could be subjects
of law, but given their abnormality denied the protection of international
law. They were subjects of law yet outlaws at the same time.30
Obtaining agency in this system thus required the non-European polities to become “civilized.” This involved resisting pressure and outright
territorial annexation by the colonizers. As I have shown, the Ottoman,
the Qing, and Southeast Asian polities such as Siam, responded to these
pressures by seeking to “become” Western. Permanent embassies and
diplomatic practices were adopted at the same time as state and nationbuilding projects. Richard Horowitz reaches the same conclusion.
Ottoman, Qing, and Siamese statesmen, facing relentless diplomatic pressure and
(usually) veiled military threats, adapted to these standards to maximize their
autonomy. As a result, these three old Eurasian states came to increasingly
approximate the European models of a national state by the early twentieth
century.
Territorial borders now became part of their rulers’ self-definition. And in
a reversal of roles, Japan engaged in its own colonial expansion along the
Western model. As a reward it was admitted to the society of civilized
nations by the 1890s.31
The creation and emphasis of a distinction between West versus nonWest thus entailed a process of normalization. Foucault describes the
normalization that came with modernity as a process in which new
standards replaced old markers of status and privilege. The new standards
defined the desirable, the “normal.” This also entailed the differentiation
between those who had achieved that standard and those who had failed
to do so. The aspiration to achieve that standard would thus over time
lead to homogeneity. But where aspiration failed, disciplining and enforcement would lead to the same outcome. Specific criteria indicated the
proximity to the benchmark.
The power of normalization imposes homogeneity; but it individualizes by making it possible to measure gaps, to determine levels . . . the norm introduces, as a
useful imperative and as the result of measurement, all the shading of individual
differences.32
30
32
threatening, the state is able to confer the appearance of unity upon the ‘self’ – i.e., a
domestic population.” Hobson 2000, 159. The process thus served to articulate the
internal from the external and simultaneously forge homogeneity within the state itself.
Aalberts 2014, 781. 31 Suzuki 2009.
From Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, in Rabinow 1984, 196–97.
Conclusion
341
Similarly, the sovereign territorial state standard was to be taken as the
norm against which other polities were to be measured. In the course of
the nineteenth century, both colonizer and colonized were included as
part of the global legal order in positivist international law.33 But only
those polities who met the standard of normality were endowed with full
agency. It was not the case that the polities outside of Europe had no
rights – their territories were not terra nullius. However, in failing to meet
the Western standards of civilization, they could be excluded from legal
protection and, indeed, deprived of their sovereignty.34 International law
thus evolved as “a set of concepts that are simultaneously used to describe
and evaluate, compare and contrast, commend and condemn.”35
Among those standards was the ability of the sovereign to exercise
supreme authority over the territory under his command. By this logic,
the extraterritorial concessions that the Ottomans and Asian powers had
granted to European powers, could be perversely construed as indicators
that the Asian states and Ottomans failed to meet the standards of
civilization.
In short, for many centuries, interactions across the Eurasian space
took place between polities with quite different perspectives on the nature
of ideal political order. Europeans dealt with and operated within multiple existing cultural schemes. All operated in an emerging global system
that allowed for a heterogeneous mix of polities and nonstate actors.36
However, as industrialization and military technology gradually advantaged the European powers, they increasingly asserted their views of their
preferred order. Encounter shifted to coercion, conquest, and colonial
control. The asymmetric power allowed them to reject non-Westphalian
conceptualizations and to regard the latter as incompatible. The Western
powers shifted to “a despotism of law underpinned by racial segregation
and rule of force, that would increasingly be justified by Europe’s supposed higher rank on the ladder of civilization.”37
European rejection of these polities, not their unwillingness to adjust,
propelled the global imposition of the Westphalian order. The diverse
polities of the Islamic world, East and Southeast Asia, made concessions
and adapted in multiple ways. That all of them – across different regions,
and across multiple centuries – were denied legal equality demonstrates
33
34
36
37
International Legal Positivism locates the sources of law in observable agreements and
structures of governance, as opposed to Natural Law, which finds the source of law also in
considerations of morality and justice. Law is what is posited, separate from the sphere of
morality.
Anghie 2004. 35 Bowden 2009, 127.
As Phillips and Sharman describe, prior to 1750, the Indian Ocean system showed a large
variety of political forms. Phillips and Sharman 2015.
Travers 2007, 30.
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Conclusion
that the European disposition drove this dynamic, not the resistance to
change of these other polities.
The full articulation of the Western attempt to establish its hierarchy
operated on several dimensions. Spatially it entailed a distinction of a
civilized core, the European states, from the excluded, uncivilized periphery. Europe was distinct from and superior to most of the rest of the
world, save for those areas that had been colonized and settled by
Europeans with exclusion and even extermination of indigenous peoples.
Cultural hierarchy reinforced this spatial hierarchy. The civilized
nations had a self-professed obligation to civilize and improve the lesser
nations and races, evinced by the French mission civilisatrice, the British
White Man’s Burden, and Dutch Ethische Politiek.
Cultural hierarchy in turn was further empowered by a temporal progression. Since the European states constituted the most recent stages of a
universally applicable evolutionary sequence, they were more advanced
than the non-Western polities. Hence, subjugation would even advance
these less developed polities by propelling them forward in this evolutionary cycle.38
The normalization process gradually evolved in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries into normation. As Foucault describes:
“Disciplinary normalization goes from the norm to the final division
between the normal and the abnormal, I would rather say that what is
involved in disciplinary techniques is a normation (normation) rather than
normalization.”39 In other words, once the standard of a desired end state
has been developed (the process of normalization), the process to achieve
that end state is put into action (normation) and the pressure to conform
to that benchmark ensues.
Nineteenth-century Legal Positivism articulated this process of normation most explicitly. But even when international legal scholarship had
largely abandoned the positivist legal perspective, Western legal scholars
(even in the 1950s and 1960s) still argued that international law was the
unique product of European principles.40
In contrast to that view, others have articulated the position that nonEuropean polities were an integral part of the Law of Nations prior to the
nineteenth century and the period of formal annexation. They signed
38
39
40
These arguments ranged across the liberal to Marxist perspectives. John Stuart Mill thus
envisioned colonies as fostering global humanity’s progress. See Duncan Bell, 2010.
Even Marx’s critique of British imperialism in India suggested that British exploitation,
vile as it might be, destroyed older social formations that would open the way to the
subsequent stages of political and economic development. See McClellan 1977, 332–37.
Foucault 2009, 85, 91,
For a discussion of some of these Eurocentric perspectives, see Anand 1966, 57–58.
Conclusion
343
treaties, exchanged diplomats, and adhered to universal standards, such
as the immunity of ambassadors.
However, in so far as legal scholarship implies that these European
and non-European actors were similar, and thus members of the community of Nations, it abets the process of normation and homogenization. Tanya Aalberts’s critique of such views echoes Foucault:
“Membership status, privilege and affiliation based on similarity and
equality creates or imposes homogeneity, while at once making visible
‘all the shading of individual differences’ and gaps ready to be
managed.”41 That is, in suggesting that early modern polities had the
same understanding of the international legal order, it echoes modernist understandings of international relations, in which compatibility
and interaction require similarity. Indeed, the conceptual vocabulary,
the Law of Nations, suggests as much, as if the treaties and agreements
had been signed by states in the modern sense of the word. Legal
scholarship likewise specifies criteria to delineate who should be
regarded as a sovereign state and a constitutive actor of the international system.42 The constitutive actors should thus be homogenous
and relations between them should follow universal rules. It delineates
specific criteria for what is to count as internal and external politics.
The final result of the Westphalian encounter with the other forms of
political order led to a perverse irony. The Westphalian sovereign, territorial states exemplified in principle the conceptual opposite of the universal empires of the Islamic and Asian polities. Authority was territorially
circumscribed, and states were juridically equal. However, once the
European states were powerful enough, they denied Asian and Middle
East powers the right to exist as independent polities. The territorial
states, by deeming universal claims to empire incompatible with the
Westphalian system, created a justification to become the very embodiment of universal empire themselves. Indeed, they outdid many of their
Eurasian counterparts in geographic scope and in their ambitions. Britain
alone, less than 100,000 square miles itself, controlled more than 13
million square miles. Moreover, whereas Ottomans, Mughal, Qing, the
Southeast Asian polities constituted capstone governments with limited
demands on the various ethnic, racial and linguistic communities in their
realm, the colonial powers sought to homogenize their holdings.
Civilizing missions intertwined with material demands for resources and
41
42
Aalberts 2014, 774.
The Montevideo criteria of 1933 did this most explicitly as a declaratory theory of
statehood. See the Convention on Rights and Duties of States (Inter-American),
December 26, 1933, accessed at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/intam03.asp.
344
Conclusion
military manpower, the imposition of liberal trade and capitalism, as well
as the creation of metropolitan institutions.43
10.6
Historical Reflection and Political Practices
To be clear, I do not suggest that a return of early modern international
societies is possible or even desirable, even if some analysts suggest that
older conceptual frameworks can clarify the structure of the international
system today.44 However, interpretations of the past inform how scholars,
policy makers, and populations as a whole, understand the present. For
example, China’s recent economic growth and military rise have created
new opportunities for the People’s Republic of China (PRC). As stated,
material factors, brute facts in Searle’s words, have consequences. But the
choices that are open to the Chinese government and people hinge to
considerable extent on their collective beliefs about what the past was and
what the future should be. Yuri Pines notes: “Interest in the legacy of the
past is increasing in China almost daily, paralleling the rise in national pride
and the resultant more affirmative view of the imperial enterprise.”45 The
prominent Chinese scholar Yan Xuetong suggests that pre-Qin philosophy
can provide useful insights into how China’s rise can integrate material
power with moral precepts.46 Some Chinese scholars now refer to the
concept of Tianxia (All under Heaven) to argue for a different view of
international relations than the one associated with the state system.
Their vision advocates inclusiveness over political segmentation. Others,
conversely, argue that the PRC should continue to emphasize a strong
version of state autonomy.47 Yet others believe Chinese policies today
should be driven by a desire to eradicate the “century of humiliation”
when the colonial powers humbled China by unequal treaties and military
expeditions.48 If so does that mean a newly assertive China in military
exploits or does it mean a desire for a new form of cultural hegemony?
By clarifying the different logics of order in these various international
societies, and by analyzing the interaction with the West, we gain deeper
insight into how the modern international system emerged, as well as how
43
44
45
46
47
48
Spruyt 2005; Betts 1985; Kupchan 1994.
For example, Yuen Foon Khong argues that the US-led system post-1945 is analogous to
a tributary system. Khong 2013.
Pines 2012, 181.
Yan 2011. Yaqing Qin argues for the need to develop a Chinese paradigm of international
relations that differs from Western theories like Realism, Liberalism, and Constructivism.
Qin 2009.
For a discussion of some of these perspectives, see Callahan 2008, 2012. See also
O’Hagan 2017, 198–99.
Kaufman 2010; Wang 2008.
Conclusion
345
those dynamics continue today. The process of normation toward the
sovereign, territorial system and the nation-state model is an ongoing
undertaking that comes replete with countervailing reactions to that
process.
10.6.1 The Flawed Pursuit of the Western Model
The expectation and desire to create the world in the image of the
Western state model derives from the combination of cultural hubris,
the West as “civilized,” and the ability to dictate state forms through
colonialism. But these were not the only sources for the pursuit of
homogeneity.
The triumphalist narrative of European superiority was aided by a
particular reading of evolutionary theory in which success served to validate
the narrative. Since European states had extended their control through
informal and formal empire, this was taken as proof that the Western form
constituted the superior institution to marshal resources, mobilize populations, and to foster economic development and military capability. The
Non-European powers had been forced to give way to a more effective and
efficient logic of order. The victories of the colonial powers thus served to
theoretically justify the practices in which they engaged. The assumption of
linear progression and selection toward optimal forms insured the Western
model as the future.49 Modernization theory in the social sciences articulated this view most forcefully in the post–World War II era.50
The evolutionary success of the Western model paired with a narrative
that other types of polity should rationally seek to adopt Western practices. The less civilized and less developed would mimic Western state
organization and society. The pursuit of “best practices” and evolutionary selection would thus both ultimately lead to convergence.51
Contrary to such expectations, even though we speak today of a global
system of sovereign territorial states, we have not arrived at a point of
complete convergence, a point where all societies and ruling elites seek to
emulate the sovereign, territorial state along the Western model. One of
the reasons for the flawed expectation of ultimate convergence is the
misuse of the evolutionary metaphor. Even in the biological sciences
evolution does not predict a singular outcome, except perhaps in
strong-form selection. Evolutionary theory, more properly understood,
49
50
51
Stephen Jay Gould decisively dispells the reading of evolution as progress toward more
advanced forms. Gould 1989.
For a classic statement, see Lipset 1959.
As John Hobson notes, Eurocentrism celebrates the ideal of Europe and the West as
categorically superior. Hobson 2012, 344.
346
Conclusion
articulates how multiple responses can emerge to the same natural environmental change.52 If we are to correctly apply the evolutionary metaphor, we should expect various responses to social pressures to generate
heterogeneity. And indeed, international economic challenges and military threats have thus precipitated diverse types of internal changes,
depending on domestic interest configurations and cultural preferences.
As in the past, the impact of the Western state model continues to be
refracted by local interests and cultural beliefs today.53
Similarly, we might expect other polities to resist or to alter today’s
demands for homogeneity. Moreover, with interstate war in decline and
state death infrequent since the end of World War II, the pressures to
conform due to military competition have abated.54 And even if such
military pressures exist they need not lead to the Western model. Here
again multiple diverse institutional responses can occur.55
Nevertheless, the ambitious pursuit of homogeneity has continued to
manifest itself in the processes of normalization and normation.56
Modernization theory viewed development as a sequential trajectory of
stages, culminating in a Western state model. Walt Rostow’s stages of
growth, and comparisons of agricultural society with industrial society,
lent themselves to classification of polities as less or more developed. The
normal was the industrial advanced state, while the less developed polity
constituted the yet-to-become normal. To be considered advanced and
developed, polities had to adopt the Western state model.57
Current attempts at state and nation building, while largely eschewing
the discredited term “modernization,” reflect the same sentiment. We
have indices of state fragility and failure.58 Again, we classify the normal,
from the abnormal, the failed state, and measure the deviation from the
normal. In a seamless connection the level of democratization is then
closely linked to the assessment of state failure and threats to transnational security. Combined with the apparent statistical regularity that
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
Spruyt 2001b, 124–27.
For example, the drive to become more like a Western state in Thailand took on specific
inflections that conformed to earlier cosmological schemes. Winichakul 2000.
As Zacher shows, few states have been eliminated and territorial borders have been
robust, particularly since 1945. Zacher 2001.
Spruyt 2017d.
Although Bowden does not use the term “normation,” his argument regarding the
continued relevance of the Eurocentric civilizational narrative is similar in many respects.
Bowden 2009, chapters 7–8.
As Hobson points out, the literature ascribes pioneering agency to the West, while the
East remains passive or predatory and, at best, emulative. Hobson 2012, 185–87.
See, e.g., the twelve-point index of the Fund for Peace and the journal Foreign Policy,
accessed at http://fundforpeace.org/fsi/introducing-myfsi/. For a different index, see
World Bank 2002.
Conclusion
347
democracies rarely fight each other, the imperative becomes clear: vast
resources should be devoted to state building, nation building, and
democracy promotion in those countries that fail to meet specific
standards.59
Acknowledging the advantages of heterogeneity and diversity leads to
doubting the wisdom of trying to duplicate the European experience in
contexts that are vastly different. Pursuing homogeneity by external state
and nation building has had only limited success. This is not to endorse a
blanket indifference to countries in turmoil and human suffering. However,
we might be more attentive to how diverse actors take on roles that are
normally associated with sovereign authorities. Hybrid governance structures might at times be more likely providers of stability and order than the
nominal sovereigns of states.60
10.6.2 Stability through Flexibility
Despite the move toward homogeneity and conformity to the normal, we
have not arrived at a single point of convergence. Variety continues. As
Iver Neumann reminds us, if we had arrived at such a convergence why do
we continue to debate the meaning and implications of sovereignty? “If
that were the whole story, with no residue left, then how to account for the
fact that it is still an open question in what degree and in which contexts
China accepts these principles and practices today?”61
Part of the reason for the reluctance to embrace heterogeneity lies in the
equation of heterogeneity and disorder. The early English School thus
explicitly argued that international society hinged on shared (Christian
and liberal) values. Those values aided the limitation of violence and
conflict and facilitated mutual understanding. Hence, the expansion of
the European system to a global scale was a beneficial process. By contrast, challenges to the Western principles were a source for concern,
given the likelihood of disorder.62
Heterogeneity, however, need not equate with disorder, nor does it
require a hegemonically imposed set of norms.63 It does require, however,
59
60
61
63
For a critique of modernization theory and the Lockean liberal impulse, see Susanne
Rudolph. As she notes, “the presumption of sameness obliterates difference when it
erases the markers that distinguish cultures and peoples and create identity and meaning.” Rudolph 2005, 6.
For suggestions along those lines, see Brooks 2005. On the limited efficacy of state- and
nation-building projects, see Eikenberry and Krasner 2018.
Neumann 2011, 470. 62 Bull 1977, 316–19.
Phillips and Sharman argue that heterogeneity and order can coexist when preferences
diverge, parties accept heteronomy, and practices are localized. Phillips and Sharman
2015, 13. They also rightly point out that heterogeneity continued despite interaction
348
Conclusion
a mental flexibility to acknowledge the multiple modes of imagining one’s
own preferred order, and a willingness to accommodate diverse views.
But this raises a question. Do all deviations from the Westphalian
system necessarily constitute challenges to the continuation of that system? Perhaps not, when one considers the performative nature of order
and the means by which early modern international societies maintained
their existing systems. Performance could deflect and mask deviation as
long as deviation did not amount to an outright challenge. As I discussed
in Chapter 5, the Tokugawa bakufu could accept the realities of daimyo
power, as long as performances suggested the acceptance of shogunal
hierarchy.64 Similarly, as Ronald Toby remarks with regard to the
Chinese tributary system,
If such a system of protocol and symbols is to be convincing it need not so much be
universally accepted . . . as it must serve the needs of an observer for the sustaining
of some deeply felt emotional self-perception . . . What was critical for the maintenance of the Chinese self-image, the perception of Chinese centrality, was
merely the appearance of acceptance by foreign states.65
Not all actors had to agree on the meaning or purpose of tribute but
performing the rituals allowed all sorts of actions to be classified in such
a way that they did not amount to outright challenges to the ruler’s
legitimacy. The ontological security of the ruler, and the polity that he
controlled, remained thereby assured. Deviations could be accommodated as long as the participants did not openly challenge the underlying
principles of the system itself. The participants understood what constituted a permissible deviation and what constituted an impermissible
violation.
Such a perspective suggests a different interpretation of Stephen
Krasner’s reading of the sovereign state system. In Sovereignty: Organized
Hypocrisy Krasner argues that the violations of particularly Westphalian
sovereignty, the right to exclude external authority from one’s own territory, demonstrate the weakness of international norms.66 Realpolitik calculations by individual rulers dictate whether or not they abide by norms
and principles. Powerful states thus insist on the right to exclude other
authorities from their own territory, but violate the sovereignty of weaker
states when they believe this to be in their interest.
My point is not to discuss whether Krasner’s argument is correct or not,
but rather to raise the question of what purpose the Westphalian principles serve. If they simply amount to hypocrisy, and are recognized by all
64
and competition well into the nineteenth century and to some degree even the twentieth
century.
Roberts 2012. 65 Toby 1991, 202. 66 Krasner 1999.
Conclusion
349
actors as such, the principles indeed would seem to serve little purpose or
have no independent causal effect.
However, when these principles are understood in the broader context –
that is, as recognition of when variations undermine the foundation of the
sovereign state system and when not – the flexibility of Westphalian principles as they are interpreted and applied actually enhances the stability of
the system.67 Consequently, deviations from the sovereignty norms are,
and must be, couched in rival justifications, such as protecting minority
rights or protecting people from mass killing. Violations due to extraordinary circumstances do not eradicate the relevance of the sovereignty norms.
Moreover, if the sovereignty norms were simply window dressing, the
weaker states would not now be among the staunchest proponents of
those very principles.68 As long as the participants involved understand
which violations are permissible in this framework and which ones constitute outright challenges to the foundational norms, the framework can
allow for deviations. In other words, what Krasner sees as hypocrisy actually constitutes flexibility in the application of principles that sustain stable
and durable interactions.69
10.6.3 Dealing with Heterogeneity
Over the past half millennium globalization has brought the European
international society in closer contact with the Islamic, East Asian, and
Southeast Asian societies. In the process, all these societies went through
profound material and cultural changes. But mutual adjustment and
alteration did not result in the homogeneity that Western preconceptions
aspired to. However, as I have argued, acknowledging heterogeneity and
responding flexibly to diversity need not equate with disorder. But to call
for respect for diversity and engaging in cross-cultural exchanges is only
the first step in approaching a vast array of issues. With my final remarks I
simply highlight several avenues of inquiry on which the preceding chapters might shed partial light.
First, there has been considerable discussion whether the rise of China
heralds an end to the postwar US-led system, whether China will support
that system, or whether the PRC might even take over the leadership role.
The question regarding the PRC’s support for the norms and principles of
67
69
I am indebted to Katrin Katz for this suggestion. 68 Dunne 1998, 188.
In a different context, John Ruggie notes that the force of the post–World War II
settlement lies not simply in the rules and procedures of agreements but rather in the
mutual understanding of underlying norms and principles. The participants share a sense
of what constitute legitimate violations of the rules. Hence, certain deviations can be
accepted as long as they do not challenge the foundational norms. Ruggie 1982.
350
Conclusion
liberal trade and limited government intervention has thus become a key
question.
At a higher level of abstraction, however, one might propose that rival
views of the contours of the World Trade Organization and the post-1945
system have actually occurred against the background of a shared understanding of political order and the state system more broadly. Unlike the
international societies of the past it is not immediately evident that states
today differ in their fundamental perspectives regarding the system’s
ontology. Cosmological justifications of political order have largely
receded. Thus, while the United States and the PRC might have different
objectives they arguably share a cognitive framework about the nature of
the social and political world. For example, they might disagree about the
extent to which intervention in conflict areas is warranted, but both
concur on the key principles of the Westphalian system, with the PRC
being a staunch defender of domestic sovereignty.
At the same time we need not assume a priori that all actors today share
or will continue to hold the same ontological perspective. When we treat
all actors as similar and as having the same worldviews we dismiss out of
hand that others favor a different vision of how the social and political
world should be structured. With that in mind, do concepts as Tianxia
constitute a challenge to the Westphalian system? When Chinese scholars
or policy makers claim this as an alternative mode of conducting international relations, does this imply a fundamental restructuring of the current state system?
Historical reflection suggests that the apparent contrast might be less
than it appears. The conceptual view of the world as one of harmony
under the mandate from heaven – that is, the conceptual ideal of the
Chinese Empire – also allowed for the pragmatic recognition of autonomous spheres of influence and control. As discussed in Chapter 4, the
Sino-centric order consisted of a politico-cultural “world” empire, as an
ideal, side by side with the material expression in the territorial empire
and a recognition of distinct polities.70 In the same vein, and depending
on the specific inflection one gives the notion of Tianxia – does it indicate
an idealized harmony of independent polities, or a desire for territorial
empire? – Tianxia need not be antagonistic to the system of territorially
demarcated, independent states if the former is the case.
The same might hold true for calls for a return of the caliphate. The
transterritorial claims by some Islamic leaders and clergy in particular
have made this a pertinent issue. As the discussion in Chapters 6 and 7
suggested, multiple doctrinal interpretations are possible regarding the
70
Wang 2018, 10.
Conclusion
351
meaning of the caliphate. Does it denote a religious community or a
political entity? What are the duties for Muslims in terms of proselytizing
the religion? Then there are the variations between doctrinal theory and
flexibility in practice.
One reading of André Wink’s work suggests a potential reconcilability
of universalist claims and the reality of political fragmentation. One
solution to the issue emerged in the West. The Western response to the
failure of Christianity to unite Europe in a (Holy Roman) empire or
theocracy led to the separation of political and spiritual authority.71
This separation permitted the continuation of the idea that spiritual
authority remained united, while the political world, the secular realm,
fragmented. The united Christian community could live side by side with
the divided political world.
The early fragmentation of Islamic unity was dealt with in another way,
by treating the fragmentation as schisms, that is, they were seen as
divergent interpretations of Islamic traditions and doctrine. Wink suggests that the political manifestation of these schisms, fitna, is incorrectly
viewed as rebellion and a challenge to the existing polity. In reality it
commonly involved the less demanding shift of individual loyalties from
one interpretation of Islam to another. In the absence of a fixed territorial
state, political fragmentation had little meaning since there was no unified
state with a territorial identity to begin with. Individuals could thus
adhere to the same religion, hence, the universal validity of Islam, and
at the same time acknowledge doctrinal variation without the territorial
implications that we ascribe to it. The idea of universal validity could exist
side by side with the recognition that in practice no such universality
pertained. The Islamic ecumene could exist as an idea side by side with
the reality of Abbasid, Umayyad, Safavid, Ottoman, and other empires.
The irresolvable contradiction we see in universal claims of Islam and
the realities of political segmentation is the result of a Westphalian perspective that accentuates a diametric tension between a universalist doctrine and the reality of political territorialization. Likewise, Prasenjit
Duara suggests that the view of irreconcilable contradictions is the product of the West’s specific cultural trajectory in which the nation-state has
become the paramount locus of loyalty and identity.72
71
72
This separation was articulated in theory, even if the secular remained permeated with
religious inflections; see Hurd 2007.
Duara 2015, 6–8. By contrast, “for the bulk of the believers in Asian societies, there is
often no exclusive loyalty to a single overpowering God or to the exclusive truthfulness of
a single story” (153). For Duara and others, revisiting non-Western traditions serves to
destabilize the loyalties that people attach to the nation-state and provides the foundation
for a more encompassing identity.
352
Conclusion
For some scholars trained in the traditions of positivist and empiricist
analyses, this account of early modern collective identities might appear
foreign and esoteric, and indeed irrelevant (less so perhaps for understanding the Islamic world given the current concerns about radical
Islam). It is hoped this book will at least give rise to the contemplation
of this question: What is it about the present typically Western understanding of how the social and political world hinges together that appears
to be “more real” or “more accurate” than other views? The idea of
continuous progress and the trust in the current superiority of Western
beliefs and political organization over earlier periods and other cultures
remains powerful.73 For many people it might be difficult to imagine that
the nation-state was not an inevitable outcome of the past, or that
Western scholarship has not captured objective reality.
In short, as the later Wittgenstein argued, we inevitably deploy our own
conceptions and mental frameworks to understand the world around us.
For that reason alone we might ponder how and why we have constructed
the world around us in its current form. On that note I can do no better
than second Susanne Rudolph’s insights.
We must try to create theoretical frameworks that combine a demystified, rationalist worldview with an understanding of the phenomenology of the symbolic in
societies where the gods have not yet died. And we must combine it with the
understanding that we too construct and act within cosmologies and that we only
deny the myths we live by because we cannot see or articulate them.74
73
74
Bowden makes a sustained argument that the civilizational perspective continues to
influence new forms of military and economic imperialism. Bowden 2009, 207.
Rudolph 1987, 742.
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