The World Imagined: Collective Beliefs and Political Order in the Sinocentric, Islamic and Southeast Asian International Societies 9781108491211, 9781108867948, 9781108811743

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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 S ¸ ahin, 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 S ¸ ahin, Lerna Yanik, Ays¸ e 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, Kayaogˇ lu 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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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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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

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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.

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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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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

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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.

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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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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

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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.

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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

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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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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.

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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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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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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.

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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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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.

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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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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

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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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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.

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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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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.

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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 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.

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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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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.

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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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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.

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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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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.

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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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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.

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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 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 Szczes´niak 1954, 93.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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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 Kayaogˇ lu 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.

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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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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 Kayaogˇ lu 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. Kayaogˇ lu 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.

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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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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.

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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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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.

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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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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.

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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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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

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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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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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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.

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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 S ¸ ahin 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

Ates¸ 2013, 11.

20

S ¸ ahin 2017, 228.

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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.

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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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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.

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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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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.

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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. Ates¸ 2013, 10. Faroqhi 2015, 348. 39 Kuran 2004, 171.

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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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; Necipo˘glu 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.

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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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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.

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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. Ates¸ 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. Necipo˘glu 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

Necipo˘glu 1993, 309. 91 Hodgson 1974, vol. 3, 73, 75, 79. Barkey 2008, 82–83; Lewis 1982, 29; Necipo˘glu 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.

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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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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; Necipo˘glu 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.

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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. Necipo˘glu 1993, 303.

104 107

Karamustafa 1992, 215. 105 Szuppe 1997, 317. My thanks to Lerna Yanik for pointing this out.

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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

Necipo˘glu 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. Necipo˘glu 1993, 307. See also 310, 312 with accounts of wine being served at royal receptions.

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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; Necipo˘glu 1993, 315. Necipo˘glu 1993, 313. 117 Necipo˘glu 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.

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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 Kayao˘glu 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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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.

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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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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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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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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. Kayaogˇ lu 2010, 104–5.

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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.

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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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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

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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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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.

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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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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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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 Kızıilbas¸ 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.

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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.

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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 Ates¸ 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.

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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 ndogˇ du 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.

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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 ndogˇ du 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. Ates¸ 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.

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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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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. Ates¸ 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

Ates¸ 2013, 23, fn. 83.

110

Ates¸ 2013, 24.

111

Ates¸ 2013, 3, 5.

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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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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.

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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 Kayaogˇ lu 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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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.

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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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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

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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.

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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.

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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 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.

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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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“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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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)

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N

W

SW

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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.

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6 2 5 1

9

3 7

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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

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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.

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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.

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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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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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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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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

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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

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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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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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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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

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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.

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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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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

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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.

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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

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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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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

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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.

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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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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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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

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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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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.

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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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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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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

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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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“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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 khalı¯f 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.

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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.

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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; Szczes´niak 1954. Weber 1976. 22 Bowden 2009, chapters 5–6.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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Index

Aalberts, Tanya, 340, 343, 353 Abbasid Empire, 169 Abdülhamid (Ottoman Sultan), 246 Acharya, Amitav, 51, 94, 161, 255, 260, 262, 264, 275, 321 Adanir, Fikret, 238 Akbar I (Mughal Emperor), 192, 194, 200–2, 204, 229, 236, 327 Alexander the Great, 1, 75, 193, 194, 215 Alexandrowicz, Charles, 309–10, 311, 314, 315 Andaya, Leonard, 262, 264, 267, 284, 293, 298–300, 305–7, 309, 314–15 Anderson, Benedict, 110, 199, 261, 300, 301, 320, 323, 338 vertical mobility, 199 Anderson, James, 89, 123 Angkor complex, 270, 272, 289 Annales School, 7, 36, 54 Annalistes, 57 architecture, 87, 112, 195–97, 270 See also cosmology Arthashastra (see Kautilya), 266, 273–74, 309 Asoka, emperor, 107, 274–75, 297 Ates¸ , Sabri, 173, 179, 191, 235, 240, 242, 355 Atwood, Chris, xiii, 103 Augsburg, Peace of, 214 Aurangzeb (Mughal Emperor), 200, 204–5 Aydin, Cemil, xiii, 17, 172 Ayutthaya kingdom, ix, 275, 289–92, 294, 295, 297, 356 instability, 294–95, 302 organizational structure, 289–92 Babar (Mughal Emperor), 200 Barkey, Karen, 183, 184, 198 Berlin Conference (1884–85), 242 Bloch, Marc, 29, 59, 65 Board of Rites (Ministry of Rites), Confucian, 11, 52, 142, 145

390

Borobudur, 270 Bourdieu, Pierre, 64 Boxer Rebellion, 146 Boyle, Edward, 138, 150 Bozeman, Adda, 50 Braudel, Fernand, 59, 258, 375 Buddhism, 73, 90, 93, 95, 103–4, 107, 140, 254, 255, 265–68, 272, 275, 280, 285, 292, 293, 297, 304, 320, 331 Theravada, 73, 285, 304 Bull, Hedley, 6, 17, 44–48, 51, 53, 72, 328 Burma, 122, 159, 160, 259, 276, 292, 293, 297–99, 304, 316 caliph, 178, 179, 184, 190, 191, 210, 231 Callahan, William, 133, 161 Cambodia, 120, 259, 270, 272, 275, 278, 292, 304, 316, 320 Canton System, 145, 388 Carlowitz, Peace of, 220, 238 Carlowitz, Treaty of, 182, 220, 235, 237 Chakravartin, 1, 50, 58, 75, 107, 254, 256, 269, 285, 287, 292–93, 300, 335 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, 1, 225, 228 China, as a modern term, 83, 86, 99, 162, 344, 349 Chinese empire, 86, 89–90, 93–95, 97–100, 105–6, 109, 115, 120–22 Chinggis Khan (Genghis Khan), 98, 101–4, 109, 192, 215, 219, 231 Chosŏ n Korea, 114, 123–26, 134, 139, 141, 143, 147–48, 152–54, 159, 162, 163 as part of tributary system, 76, 147, 159 as superior civilization, 125 lack of adaptation to Westphalian system, 147–48 relations with Ming and Qing, 123–26, 144, 148, 159 Chutintaranond, Sunait, 278, 291–92, 297, 318

Index Classical Realism, 28 Coedès, George, 73, 258, 280 collective belief system, 8, 43, 70, 116, 159, 231, 282, 302, 329 See also mentalité collective collective imagination, 7, 30–37, 58, 86, 110–15, 164, 247, 264, 280, 318–21 See also collective belief system Concert System, 10 Confucianism, 89, 90–91, 93–98, 103, 106–7, 110, 129, 131, 140, 143, 161, 265, 330, 335 key elements, 97, 99 Neo-Confucianism, 97, 98 Constructivism (or Constructivist theory), 37–41 Wendtian interactionism, 41, 52 Wendtian statist perspective, 39 See also Ruggie and Wendt Cook, James (Captain), 42, 70, 72 See also Sahlins and Obeyesekere cosmological beliefs, 5, 263, 274, 283, 284, 304, 329, 331, 337 cosmology, 64, 111–14, 264–73, 305–6 and architecture, 111–12, 269–70 influence of, See Southeast Asia influence on political organization, 271–72, 273, 305–6 Mount Meru, 264, 268–70 cosmopolitanism, 18th century European, 161, 265, 327 culture, defined, 7, 35–36, 57–61, 64, 73 See also Geertz, Annales School, collective beliefs systems, Ross Daoism, 93, 95, 103, 107, 140 Darling, Linda, 183 devshirme, 185, 198, 205 dharma, 269, 274, 293 Dressler, Markus, 231 Duby, Georges, 59–60 Dumézil, Georges, 64, 268 Dunne, Timothy, xiii, 5, 23, 28, 34, 332, 333 early modern, 3, 5, 9, 12, 18, 36, 59, 62, 73, 77–79, 117, 141, 175, 176, 265, 296, 331, 343, 344, 352 East Asian tributary system, 6, 17, 74, 88–110, 115–18, 119–38, 157–64, 308, 330, 331 based on collective beliefs, 88–90, See also Fairbank flexibility, 87, 96–110 gift exchange, 90, 93, 116

391 lack of inter-state war, 91 multiple dimensions, 87, 94 mutual obligations, 115–16, 121, 124, 130 not based on material power, 84, 89 origin and duration, 95 present perspectives of the past, 160–64 ritual performance, 113, 116–18 violence in, 109 East India Company, Dutch (VOC), 311, 316, 339 East India Company, England, 307, 339 El Amine, Loubna, 37, 116, 281 Eliade, Mircea, 64, 113, 118, 197, 256, 269, 362 empiricism, 27 Englehart, Neil, 278, 292, 316, 318 English School, 6, 23, 34, 35, 44–48, 51–54, 157, 171, 173, 254, 256, 328, 333, 347 Eurocentrism, 51, 70 international society, 47, 52, 347 Essentialism, 69–70 facts, social and brute, 32, 34, 55, 344 Fairbank, John K., 17, 76, 88–91, 92–93, 94–95 Fortna, Benjamin, 241–42 Foucault, 12, 38, 79, 217, 340, 342–43, See normation and normalization Francis I, 233 Gadamer, Hans Georg, 35 galactic empire, 10, 44, 58, 75, 100, 273, 285, 286–92, 300–2, 307–11, 317, 318, 321–24 Asoka, emperor, 275 fluid boundaries in, 285, 288 mandala authority structure, 275–79 personal networks, 275, 278–79, 282, 285, 290–91 Geertz, Clifford, 35, 57, 100, 128, 191, 253, 255, 263, 320, 326, 364, 387 George III, king of England, 141 ghazi warfare (ghaza), 174, 181–82, 184, 188 See also warfare in Ottoman, Safavid, Mughal empires Gilpin, Robert, 3, 20 Goffman, Daniel, 226, 354, 358, 384 Gong, Gerrit, 158 Gong, prince, 133, 145 Grotius, Hugo, 236, 308, 312 Guangxu (Qing emperor), 143, 156

392

Index

Hamashita, Takeshi, 157 Han dynasty, 61, 90, 97–99, 100–2, 104–8, 111, 112, 114, 131, 264–73 hegemonic stability theory, 76 hegemonic wars, 16, 21, 83, 131 hegemony, 17, 20, 23, 49, 85, 96, 109, 127, 157, 161, 344 lack thereof, 300–3 Heine-Geldern, Robert, 253, 263, 264, 268, 272, 278, 295 Hempel, Carl, 24, 27 hermeneutics (or hermeneutic theory), 36, 67, 68 Hideyoshi, Toyotomo, 124 Hinduism (or Brahmanic), 194, 197, 200–2, 254, 264–68, 270–73, 275–79, 280, 305 historical self-reflection, relevance of, xii, 56, 328 Hobson, John, 39, 339, 345 Hodgson, Marshall, 168, 175, 205 Hong Taiji, 106, 108 Hongwu, emperor, 120 Horowitz, Richard, 340, 367 Hourani, Albert, 167, 168, 176 Hurewitz, Jacob C., 50, 220, 368 hybrid governance, 347 Ikenberry, John, 19, 328 Inalcik, Halil, 174, 182, 185 inclusion and exclusion, 2, 11, 32, 36, 52, 61, 131, 169, 210, 214, 256, 300, 301, 323, 335–38 civilizationally defined, 32, 53, 61–63, 131, 210, 257, 302 cultural mapping, 240–42 territorially defined, 31, 40, 219 Indonesia, 73, 120, 259, 260, 270, 277, 283, 303–4, 310, 316, 320, 321, 356 Bali, xi, 261, 281, 304, 314, 331 different perspectives of treaties, 311, 314–15 Dutch denial of legal equality, 312–16 syncretic Islamic influences, 303–4 Western colonial powers, 306, 310, 312–16, See also Srivijaya, Mataram kingdom, Majapahit, Moluccan Islands International Court of Justice (ICJ), 308 international society, 4–9, 15, 18, 23, 32, 35, 45–48, 52–54, 67, 72, 74, 76, 77, 91, 139, 169–70, 171, 175, 179, 210, 212, 217, 247, 249, 254, 283, 321, 329, 331, 347

Islam, 73, 103–4, 170–80, 182, 208, 211–13, 219–22, 232, 234, 253, 303–4 centrality of Qur’an, 174, 177, 191 religious cleavages in, 179, 191, 204, 234 schools of thought, 177, 222 sources of doctrine, 222 Islamic world, 2, 10, 76, 167–249 absence of hegemonic power, 76, 247 as interconnected world, 202, 207, 208, 247 as international society, 210, 212 authority not territorially defined, 207, 219 collective beliefs in, 175–76 essentialist readings of, 170–72 inclusiveness, 198–200, 221 Mongol invasions, 181 Turco-Mongol heritage in, 180–90 zones of war and peace, 218, 221 Ismail I (Safavid Shah), 187, 191 Jahan (Mughal Emperor), 202, 230 Jahangir (Mughal emperor), 202, 227, 230 Japan, 90, 116–17, 124, 125–27, 135, 138, 139–40, 148–55, 163 centrality of, 127, 148 relations with China, 124, 126–27, 140, 147, 150–54, See also Tokugawa shogunate Java, 71, 120, 257, 258, 261–62, 271–72, 275–77, 289, 292, 293, 298, 301, 304, 310, 320–21, 331 jihad, 182, 183–84, 186, 188, 211, 222, 234 See also ghazi Jin (Jurchen) empire, 104 Kang Youwei, 143 Kang, David, 9, 17, 45, 53, 76, 84, 90–92, 94, 97, 143, 162, 330, 369 Katzenstein, Peter, 26, 27, 38, 366 Kautilya, 266, 273–74, 302, 309, 357 Kayaogˇ lu, Turan, 17, 142, 144, 216, 245, 369 Khadduri, Majid, 233 Khaldun, Ibn, 167 Khubilai Khan, 102–4, 107 King of France, Charles X, 338 Kinra, Rajiv, 212 Kleingeld, Pauline, 327, 370 Koryŏ kingdom, 123 Krasner, Stephen, 2, 20, 347, 348–49, 362, 371 Küçük Kaynarca, Treaty of, 239 Kuran, Timur, 179, 180

Index Laos, 275, 304, 316–18 Larsen, Kirk, 94, 143, 155 Law of Nations, 150, 154, 216, 236, 244, 247, 286, 307–9, 310, 311–12, 342, 343, 354, 357, 370 as instrument of colonialism, 150, 286 Eurocentrism of, 216, 244, 286, 312 legal positivism, 247, 286, 307–11, See also normation Le Goff, Jacques, 7, 59, 60, 64, 263, 330, 372 Lebow, Ned, 26, 36, 56, 59 Lee, Ji-Young, xiii, xiv, 102, 117, 124, 126 Lewis, Bernard, 174, 182, 201, 205, 220, 381 Liao (Khitan) empire, 86, 94, 98, 103, 104, 123, 128, 131 Lieberman, Victor, 255, 259, 287, 293, 298–99, 303 Lifan Yuan, 111, 140 Logical Positivism, 24 See also Carl Hempel Lubis, Mochtar, 256, 258, 264, 271, 276, 293, 305, 373 Lukes, Steven, 68, 73, 384 Macartney mission, 63, 141, 152, 156 Mahmud II (Ottoman Sultan), 239, 363 Majapahit empire/kingdom, 260, 262, 275, 293, 321 mandala schematic, 264–79, 286–92, 296, 317 and inter-polity relations, 286–92 as basis for political organization, 271–79, See also cosmology, Southeast Asia design, 264–68 mandate from heaven, 52, 133, 335, 350 mapping practices, Chinese, 92, 113 Martin, William, 143 Mataram kingdom (8-11th c., 16-18th c.), 255, 260, 261, 276, 278, 296 McNeill, William, 3, 169, 186 Mehmed II (Ottoman Sultan), 185, 192, 209, 228, 241, 366, 368 Meiji Restoration, 10, 73, 126, 149–51, 152, 154 adoption of Western state model, 149–50, 154 Japanese colonialism, 150–54 mapping practices, 150 new cognitive script, 154–55 use of international law, 149

393 mentalité collective, 7, 37, 116, 175, 264, 280, 330 Minawi, Mostafa, 249 Ming dynasty, xi, 61, 63, 93, 94, 98–99, 104–6, 111, 120–26, 289 multivocality in, 93, 99, 105, 109 Moertono, Somersaid, 278, 287, 295, 302, 375 Mokyr, Joel, 50, 137, 375 Moluccan islands, 262, 304, 322 alliance patterns in, 305 influence of cosmological views, 304, 322 Mongols, 66, 98, 100–9, 120, 123, 128, 161, 175, 179, 188, 191, 208, 234 government organization, 104 inclusiveness, 103, 105 influences on Ming and Qing dynasties, 105, 113–14 military organization, 102, 106 religious tolerance, 270–72 Morgenthau, Hans, 19, 28 Mughal Empire, 176, 187–90, 192, 194–95, 197, 200–3, 206, 213, 227–29, 230, 234, 236, 327 architecture and legitimation, 194–95, 197 diplomacy, 227–29, 230 heterogeneity and inclusion, 194, 200–3, 327 influence on European thought, 212–13 multivocality and legitimation, 192, 200–3 population, 200 relations with Safavids and Ottomans, 227–29 warfare and military organization, 187–90, 236 multivocality, 8, 12, 101–10, 184, 248 Naff, Thomas, 223, 239 national identity, created by Othering, 146, 154, 163, 213, 215 nation-state, and oppositional other, 9, 12, 19, 74, 78, 79, 88, 110, 146, 163, 164, 216, 243, 324, 328, 336, 338, 345, 351, 352 negara (nagara), 255, 261, 269, 314 Neo-Liberalism, 23, 91 Neumann, Iver, 15, 31, 35, 43, 51, 149, 158, 347 Newtonian perspectives, 30, 333 normalization and normation, 12, 79, 323, 342, 345, 346 evolutionary metaphors, 323, 340 of the nation state, 79, 343, 345

394

Index

North, Douglass, 49 Nurhaci, 106–7, 108 Obeyesekere, Gananath, 70 Oriental despotism, 202, 327 Orientalism, 69–70, 174, 261 See also Said Ottoman Empire, 10, 75, 169, 174, 175, 179–89, 191–200, 204–6, 207–13, 215–17, 219–26, 228–32, 234–49 acceptance of territorial borders, 240, 241–43 adoption of Western diplomacy, 239 adoption of Westphalian principles, 238–43 architecture and legitimation, 192, 195–96 central Asian roots, 176, 180 commonality with Safavid and Mughal Empires, 173, 180, 207 conflicts with Safavid Empire, 179, 203, 241 conquest of Byzantine Empire, 192–93 excluded from Concert of Europe, 245 heterogeneity and inclusion, 183, 210 mapping practices in, 240–41 multivocality and legitimation, 192–93, 207 nationalist revolts, 238–43 Orthodox Christians in, 198, 210 relations with France, 234 Sunni religion in, 179 warfare and military organization, 174, 183–89 Western bias towards, 244–45 Park, Seo-Hyun, 139, 140, 142, 144, 145, 147 Passarowitz, Treaty of, 238 Patomäki, Heikki, 333, 377 People’s Republic of China (PRC), 86, 161–62, 344, 349, 350 Perdue, Peter, 92, 109, 162 performative script, 92, 118, 128 See also Roberts performative state (theatre state), xi, 281, 306 Phillips, Andrew, ii, 35, 45, 54, 138 Popper, Karl, 24 Positivism, 9, 24, 34, 36, 43, 54, 68, 332, 337 Qajar Dynasty, 241 Qianlong emperor, 106, 110, 137 Qin dynasty, 93, 110

Qing dynasty (also Manchu dynasty), 84, 90, 93, 98, 99, 110, 111, 115, 122, 126, 135, 148, 151, 152–53, 155–56, 161, 162, 336 19th century Nationalism and nationalist movements, 146 adjustment to Westphalian practices, 135, 148, 156 administrative innovation in, 107, 140 adoption of territorial borders, 141 external pressures on, 138–46, 148, 151 government organization, 111, 142 military organization and banner system, 106 multivocality, 106, 109 non-Han elements, 107–8 performance and authority, 111, 113, 115, 336 understanding of state system, 143, 144 western bias of, 141 Rawski, Evelyn, 87, 93, 98, 109 Reid, Anthony, 254, 260, 263, 282, 289, 298, 303, 306, 310, 354, 369, 385 Resink, Gertrudes, 301, 310, 312–15 Reus-Smit, Christian, ii, 5, 12, 39–41, 46–47, 54, 60, 70 Reynolds, Craig, 260, 263, 268, 269, 273, 358, 379, 382, 383 Ricci, Mateo, 137 Ringmar, Erik, 91, 138 rituals and performance, 48, 63, 100, 111, 112, 115–18, 129, 299, 348 See also East Asian tributary system Roberts, Luke, 116–17, 348 Rogers, Ben, 57, 202, 315, 334 Ross, Marc Howard, 36, 61 Rowe, William, 141 Rudolph, Susanne, 12, 34, 347, 352 Ruggie, John, 7, 11, 28, 38, 39, 349 Ryukyu kingdom, contested status, 117, 120, 150, 151, 152, 159 See also Taiwan sacred and profane, 50, 99–101, 108, 113, 126, 133, 270, 334 Safavid Empire, 173, 181, 187–90, 191–92, 193–94, 196–97, 203–11, 229–32, 234–35, 241–42 architecture and legitimation, 197 heterogeneity and inclusion, 204, 208 multivocality and legitimation, 193, 211, 247 population, 200

Index Shi’a religion in, 229–32, 235 warfare and military organization, 187–88, 230–32, 242 Sahib Qiran, 1, 50, 194, 212 S ¸ ahin, Kaya, xiii, xiv, 173 Sahlins, Marshall, 35, 43, 60, 70, 284 Said, Edward, 69, 174, 357 scientific realism, 38, 43 Searle, John P., 35, 43 Self and Other, 41, 332 Self-Strengthening Movement, 145 Selim III (Ottoman Sultan), 193, 205, 238, 239 Shang Dynasty, 112 Shari’a, 77, 172, 179, 180, 190, 193, 196, 208, 211, 221, 230, 233, 236, 281, 304, 331, 383 as unifying element, 180, 232, 331 flexibility of, 193, 208–9, 221 Sharman, Jason, xiv, 6, 16, 45, 77, 137, 138, 259, 298, 307, 311, 330, 341, 347 Shi’a, 171, 173, 178–79, 187, 191, 194, 197, 201, 203, 204, 210, 230–32, 234 opposition to Sunni, 204, 229, 234 views of succession, 178 Shorto, Harry, 267, 268, 269, 276, 280, 293, 296, 319, 381 Siam, 11, 120, 258, 278, 283, 286, 289, 292, 298, 304, 316–19, 323, 340 as mandala polity, 278, 317 as sovereign state, 317 King Chulalongkorn, 318 mapping practices, 11 redefinition of Self and Other, 318 Sino-Japanese war, 146, 154, 155 Siyar, 233, 357 alliances and treaties, 235 international law, 233 territoriality, 233 Skinner, Quentin, 33, 35, 56, 360, 379, 381 Soejima mission, 151 Song dynasty (Song empire), 94, 97 Southeast Asia, 76, 77, 253–83, 284–86, 287–325 as a region, 258–60 Hindu and Buddhist influences, 264–73 importance of cosmology, 264–73 Indianized, 280 Islamic influences, 285, 303–4 lack of hegemonic actor, 76, 77, 281–82, 300–3 methodological challenges, 260–63 non-territorial authority, 275–79, 287–92

395 sovereign territorial state, 32, 298, 316, 341 Spring and Autumn periods, 100, 143 Srivijaya, 120, 260, 261, 275, 296, 321 state, term as anachronism, 40, 58, 75 Structural Realism, 4, 23, 26, 39, 40, 44, 218, 332, 358, 369 See also Classical Realism Süleyman I, the Magnificent (Ottoman Sultan), 193, 222 Sulh-I Kul, 200 Sunni, 171–73, 178, 179, 180, 191, 194, 201, 203, 208, 229–30, 232, 234 opposition to Shi’a, 204, 231, 234 views of succession, 178–79 Suzuki, Shogo, 45, 127, 142, 143, 148–49, 150, 152–56, 163, 340 Tahmasp I (Safavid Shah), 191, 195 Taiwan (see also Ryukyu), 150–52, 161, 162 Tambiah, Stanley, 77, 108, 259, 268, 287, 319, 366 Tang dynasty (Tang empire), 100, 110, 112 Tangut (Xi-Xia Empire), 98 Tanzimat period (see also Ottoman empire), 237, 242, 243, 246 Thapar, Romalia, 201, 206, 275 Tianxia, universalist connotation, 56, 86, 95, 99–100, 111, 143, 161, 344, 350 Tibet, 95, 109, 140, 143, 161, 359 Timur (Tamerlane), 26, 75, 167, 179, 181, 193, 212, 215, 219 Toby, Ronald, 83, 126, 155, 348 Tokugawa shogunate, 83, 116–17, 125–28, 148, 149, 316, 348, 372, 379 Treaty of Kangwha, 125 Treaty of Paris, 245–46, 247 Treaty of Shimonoseki, 154 Triumphalist narratives, 18 Uighur, 108, 162 umma, 172, 179, 192, 210, 234 Unger, Roberto, 49 universalist empire, 1–2, 3, 10, 11, 18, 49, 75, 78, 119, 134, 143, 157, 193, 217, 343 See also Tianxia, Chakravartin universalist rule, 1–2, 8, 10, 26, 46, 75, 99, 104, 107, 143, 241, 300, 351 See also Tianxia, Chakravartin urban design, 115, 269–70, 273 Chinese cosmology and legitimation, 111, 268–72

396

Index

Van der Kroef, Justus, 312–16, 320 Vietnam, 105, 119–23, 259, 317, 334–36 part of tributary system, 48, 76, 90, 119–22, 330, 334–36 Waldron, Arthur, 158 Wallerstein, Immanuel, 6, 48, 386 See also world systems theory Waltz, Kenneth, 3, 19–20, 25 Wang, Mingming, 64, 99 Wang, Yuanchong, 90, 115, 119 Wanli, Qing dynasty emperor, 137 Warring States Period, 139 Watson, Adam, 31, 46–47, 51, 88 Weaton, Henry, 143, 149 Weber, Eugen, 243, 337 Weberian model, 213 Wedeen, Lisa, 118 Welsh, Jennifer, 15, 31, 51, 88, 149 See also Self and Other Wendt, Alexander, 24, 38–39, 41–43, 52, 387 Westphalia, Peace of, 2, 12, 139, 157, 214, 218, 242, 248, 338, 365 Westphalian state system, xii, 3, 6, 9, 11, 16, 37, 87, 132, 144, 213, 217, 237, 336 Wight, Martin, 6, 23, 44, 46

Winch, Peter, 15, 35, 55, 69 Winichakul, Thongchai, 269, 287, 319, 337, 346, 388 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 33, 35, 55, 56, 58, 68, 69, 118, 352 Wolters, Oliver, 77, 254, 257, 259, 261–63, 265–66, 274, 275, 287–88, 289, 293, 294, 295, 296–97 Womack, Brantley, 92, 122 Wong, R. Bin, 108, 142, 146 world systems theory, 48 Xianfeng, Qing dynasty emperor, 133, 142 Xuetong, Yan, 344, 388 Yongle, emperor, 123 Yuan dynasty, 98, 102, 104–6, 120 multivocality of, 103, 105 Zhang, Chunjie, 326 Zhao, Tingyang, 161–62 Zheng He, 121, 135, 289 Zhonghua, 123, 124 Zhou, Fanyin, 122 Zongli (Tsungli) Yamen, 142, 145, 152, 380 Zuhab (Zohab), Treaty of, 235