University of Tasmania, Australia

When IR scholars reflect on the 'standard of civilization', they typically concentrate on the Western civilizational standard that justified European imperial expansion after 1800CE. Contrarily, in this paper I comparatively examine the role that non-Western standards of civilization played in constituting international systems in early modern Asia from the sixteenth through to the eighteenth centuries. Specifically, I argue that distinctive civilizational standards played a key role in structuring the international relations of Asia's (and the world's) two most populous early modern empires – the Mughal Empire in South Asia, and the Qing Empire in East Asia. In both instances, foreign conquest dynasties originating from the Asian steppe absorbed civilizational standards (respectively Persianate and Confucian Chinese) from the neighboring sedentary societies that they conquered. This dynamic contrasted radically with later European maritime imperialism, which saw invaders conversely coercively impose their own civilizational logics on subjugated majorities in Asia and Africa. Beyond this essential contrast, however, key parallels – most notably the existence of comparable binaries of toleration/civilization – united early modern Asian and later European civilizational standards. While neither the Mughal nor Qing Emperors accepted formal equality with other polities, both nevertheless applied a de facto logic of toleration when engaging polities possessing a shared high culture (Safavid Iran for the Mughals, the Confucian kingdoms of Korea and Vietnam for Qing China). Both also applied a logic of civilization when dealing either with nomadic pastoralist steppe rivals and pre-literate societies that they came to conquer, 'barbarians' being offered a stark choice between assimilation and extermination. The existence of comparable toleration/civilization binaries across early modern Asian and modern European imperialism suggests a common dynamic of civilizational politics, one that the field's prevailing Eurocentrism currently obscures.  

Speaker

Andrew Phillips (PhD, Cornell) is a Discovery Early Career Research Award Fellow in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland. His research focuses on the global state system's evolution from 1500 to the present, and on contemporary security challenges in East and South Asia, with a particular focus on Great Power rivalry and counter-terrorism. He is the author of War, Religion and Empire: The Transformation of International Orders (Cambridge, 2011, winner of the 2012 Crisp Prize from the Australian Political Science Association), and has articles published or forthcoming in European Journal of International Relations, International Studies Quarterly, Review of International Studies, Pacific Review, Survival, Australian Journal of International Affairs, National Identities, and Security Challenges.  

Venue: Room 586, Social Sciences Building, Sandy Bay campus

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Dr Phillip's visit to the University of Tasmania has been funded by the
UTAS Governance and Implementation Research Group