Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-31T02:07:23.589Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Social Positioning and International Order Contestation in Early Modern Southeast Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2021

Get access

Abstract

Identities and ideas can lead to international order contestation through the efforts of international actors to socially position themselves and perform their identities. International actors try to shape the world to suit who they want to be. To substantiate this argument, I examine the contestation of international orders in early modern Southeast Asia. The prevailing view portrays a Confucian international order which formed a consensual and stable hierarchy in East Asia. However, instead of acquiescing to hegemonic leadership, both Siam and Vietnam frequently sought to assert their equality and even superiority to the Chinese dynasties. I argue that both polities engaged in political contention to define their places in relation to other polities and the broader social context in which they interacted. I examine how international order contestation emerged from efforts to define and redefine background knowledge about social positioning, social categorization, and the political ontologies and beliefs about collective purpose on which they are based. I claim that agents seek to interact with others in ways that reify their sense of self, and challenge the background knowledge embedded in performances of other actors that threaten their ability to perform their identity. I also argue against theories that attribute international order contestation to hegemonic decline or the breakdown of a tacit bargain, which assume that orders are held together by a dominant power. One implication is that hegemony and hierarchy are based on dominant ideas, not dominant states.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Acharya, Amitav, and Buzan, Barry. 2019. The Making of Global International Relations: Origins and Evolution of IR at Its Centenary. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adler, Emanuel. 2010. Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't: Performative Power and the Strategy of Conventional and Nuclear Defusing. Security Studies 19 (2):199229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adler, Emanuel, and Pouliot, Vincent. 2011. International Practices. International Theory 3 (1):136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adler-Nissen, Rebecca. 2014. Stigma Management in International Relations: Transgressive Identities, Norms, and Order in International Society. International Organization 68 (1):143–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allan, Bentley B. 2018. Scientific Cosmology and International Orders. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allan, Bentley B., Vucetic, Srdjan, and Hopf, Ted. 2018. The Distribution of Identity and the Future of International Order: China's Hegemonic Prospects. International Organization 72 (4):839–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, Benedict. 1990. Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia. Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Baker, Chris. 2003. Ayutthaya Rising: From Land or Sea? Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 34 (1):4162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baker, Chris, and Phongpaichit, Pasuk. 2017. A History of Ayutthaya: Siam in the Early Modern World. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baldanza, Kathlene. 2016. Ming China and Vietnam: Negotiating Borders in Early Modern Asia. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bially Mattern, Janice, and Zarakol, Ayşe. 2016. Hierarchies in World Politics. International Organization 70 (3):623–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1991. Language and Symbolic Power. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre, and Wacquant, Loïc J.D.. 1992. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 2005. Giving an Account of Oneself. Fordham University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Callahan, William A. 2012. Sino-Speak: Chinese Exceptionalism and the Politics of History. Journal of Asian Studies 71 (1):3355.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chandler, David P. 1972. Cambodia's Relations with Siam in the Early Bangkok Period: The Politics of a Tributary State. Journal of the Siam Society 60 (1):153169.Google Scholar
Cheah, Boon Kheng. 2012. Ming China's Support for Sultan Mahmud of Melaka and Its Hostility Towards the Portuguese After the Fall of Melaka in 1511. Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 85 (2):5577.Google Scholar
Cho, Hung-guk. 2017. The 1592 Japanese Invasion of Korea and Diplomacies of Siam and China. Journal of Asian History 51 (1):87102.Google Scholar
Chutintaranond, Sunait. 1988. Cakravartin: Ideology, Reason, and Manifestation of Siamese and Burmese Kings in Traditional Warfare. Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 4 (1):4656.Google Scholar
Chutintaranond, Sunait. 1990. “Mandala,” “Segmentary State” and Politics of Centralization in Medieval Ayudhya. Journal of the Siam Society 78 (1):89100.Google Scholar
Cox, Robert W. 1983. Gramsci, Hegemony, and International Relations: An Essay in Method. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 12 (2):162–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cushman, Jennifer W. 1993. Fields from the Sea: Chinese Junk Trade with Siam During the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries. Cornell Southeast Asia Program.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dellois, Rosita. 2003. Mandala: From Sacred Origins to Sovereign Affairs in Traditional Southeast Asia. Research Paper 10, Center for East-West Studies.Google Scholar
Eiland, Michael D. 1989. Dragon and Elephant: Relations Between Viet Nam and Siam, 1782–1847. PhD diss., George Washington University.Google Scholar
Elliot, Mark C. 2001. The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China. Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Englehart, Neil A. 2010. Representing Civilization: Solidarism, Ornamentalism, and Siam's Entry into International Society. European Journal of International Relations 16 (3):417–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erika, Masuda. 2004. The Last Siamese Tributary Missions to China, 1851–1854 and the “Rejected” Value of Chim Kong. In Maritime China in Transition 1750–1850, edited by Wang, Gungwu and Ng, Chin-keong., 3342. Harrasosowitz.Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford. 1980. Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteeneth-Century Bali. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Gilpin, Robert. 1981. War and Change in World Politics. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hevia, James L. 2009. Tribute, Asymmetry and Imperial Formations: Rethinking Relations of Power in East Asia. Journal of American-East Asian Relations 16 (1):6983.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ikenberry, G. John. 2011. Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis and Transformation of the American World Order. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Ikenberry, G. John, and Nexon, Daniel H.. 2019. Hegemony Studies 3.0: The Dynamics of Hegemonic Orders. Security Studies 28 (3):395421.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackson, Patrick T. 2016. The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations: Philosophy of Science and Its Implications for the Study of World Politics. 2nd ed. Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnston, Alastair Iain. 1998. Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kang, David C. 2010. East Asia Before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute. Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Kathirithamby-Wells, Jeyamalar. 1999. The Age of Transition: The Mid-eighteenth to Early Nineteenth Centuries. In The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, edited by Tarling, Nicholas, Vol. 1, 572620. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kelley, Liam C. 1998. Batavia Through the Eyes of Vietnamese Envoys. Explorations in Southeast Asian Studies 2 (1):218.Google Scholar
Kelley, Liam C. 2005. Beyond the Bronze Pillars: Envoy Poetry and the Sino-Vietnamese Relationship. University of Hawaii Press.Google Scholar
Kelley, Liam C. 2006. “Confucianism” in Vietnam: A State of the Field Essay. Journal of Vietnamese Studies 1 (1/2):314–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, Robert E. 2012. A “Confucian Long Peace” in Pre-Western East Asia? European Journal of International Relations 18 (3):407–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koizumi, Junko. 2009. Between Tribute and Treaty: Sino-Siamese Relations from the Late Nineteenth Century to the Early Twentieth Century. In Negotiating Asymmetry: China's Place in Asia, edited by Reid, Anthony and Zheng, Yangwen, 4772. University of Hawaii Press.Google Scholar
Koizumi, Junko. 2016. The Last Friendship Exchanges Between Siam and Vietnam, 1879–1882: Siam Between Vietnam and France—and Beyond. Trans-Regional and National Studies of Southeast Asia 4 (1):131–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lake, David A. 2009. Hierarchy in International Relations. Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Larson, Deborah Welch, Paul, T.V., and Wohlforth, William C.. 2014. Status and World Order. In Status in World Politics, edited by Paul, T.V., Larson, Deborah Welch, and Wohlforth, William C., 332. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Ji-young. 2017. China's Hegemony: Four Hundred Years of East Asian Domination. Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lieberman, Victor. 2003. Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830. Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loos, Tamara. 2006. Subject Siam: Family, Law, and Colonial Modernity in Thailand. Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCourt, David M. 2016. Practice Theory and Relationalism as the New Constructivism. International Studies Quarterly 60 (3):475–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitzen, Jennifer. 2006. Ontological Security in World Politics: State Identity and the Security Dilemma. European Journal of International Relations 12 (3):341–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Musgrave, Paul, and Nexon, Daniel. 2018. Defending Hierarchy from the Moon to the Indian Ocean: Symbolic Capital and Political Dominance in Early Modern China and the Cold War. International Organization 72 (3):591626.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nexon, Daniel, and Neumann, Iver. 2018. Hegemonic-Order Theory: A Field-Theoretic Account. European Journal of International Relations 24 (3):662–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ngaosyvathn, Mayoury, and Ngaosyvathn, Pheuiphanh. 1998. Paths to Conflagration: Fifty Years of Diplomacy and Warfare in Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam, 1778–1828. Cornell Southeast Asia Program.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Park, Seo-Hyun. 2017. Sovereignty and Status in East Asian International Relations. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, Andrew. 2018. Contesting the Confucian Peace: Civilization, Barbarism and International Anarchy in East Asia. European Journal of International Relations 24 (4):740–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pouliot, Vincent. 2015. Practice Tracing. In Process Tracing: From Metaphor to Analytic Tool, edited by Bennett, Andrew and Checkel, Jeffrey T., 237–59. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pouliot, Vincent. 2016. International Pecking Orders: The Politics and Practice of Multilateral Diplomacy. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pratt, Simon Frankel. 2017. A Relational View of Ontological Security in International Relations. International Studies Quarterly 61 (1):7885.Google Scholar
Promboon, Suebsaeng. 1971. Sino-Siamese Tributary Relations, 1282–1853. PhD diss., University of Wisconsin.Google Scholar
Reid, Anthony. 1993. Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450–1680. Vol. 2. Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Reid, Anthony. 2009. Negotiating Asymmetry: Parents, Brothers, Friends and Enemies. In Negotiating Asymmetry: China's Place in Asia, edited by Reid, Anthony and Zheng, Yangwen, 128. University of Hawaii Press.Google Scholar
Reus-Smit, Christian. 1999. The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity, and Institutional Rationality in International Relations. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Reus-Smit, Christian. 2018. On Cultural Diversity: International Theory in a World of Difference. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ringmar, Erik. 2012. Performing International Systems: Two East-Asian Alternatives to the Westphalian Order. International Organization 66 (1):125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ringmar, Erik. 2016. How the World Stage Makes Its Subjects: An Embodied Critique of Constructivist IR Theory. Journal of International Relations and Development 19 (1):101–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rungswasdisab, Puangthong. 1995. War and Trade: Siamese Interventions in Cambodia, 1767–1851. PhD diss., University of Wollongong.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. 2009. The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. Yale University Press.Google ScholarPubMed
Spruyt, Hendrik. 2020. The World Imagined: Collective Beliefs and Political Order in the Sinocentric, Islamic and Southeast Asian International Societies. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stuart-Fox, Martin. 2003. A Short History of China and Southeast Asia: Tribute, Trade and Influence. Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Suzuki, Shogo. 2009. Civilization and Empire: China and Japan's Encounter with European International Society. Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tambiah, Stanley J. 1976. World Conqueror and World Renouncer: A Study of Buddhism and Polity in Thailand Against a Historical Background. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winichakul, Thongchai. 1994. Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation. University of Hawaii Press.Google Scholar
Winichakul, Thongchai. 2000. The Quest for “Siwilai”: A Geographical Discourse of Civilizational Thinking in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Siam. Journal of Asian Studies 59 (3):528–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Lieu, Joshua. 2017. The Tributary System and the Persistence of Late Victorian Knowledge. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 77 (1):7392.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Viraphol, Sarasin. 1977. Tribute and Profit: Sino-Siamese Trade, 1652–1853. Harvard East Asian Monographs 76. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Wade, Geoff. 2019. Ming China and Southeast Asia in the Fifteenth Century. In China and Southeast Asia: Historical Interactions, edited by Wade, Geoff and Chin, James K., 87129. Routledge.Google Scholar
Wade, Geoff. 2000. The “Ming shi-lu” as a Source for Thai History: Fourteenth to Seventeenth Centuries. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 31 (2):249–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wade, Geoff, trans. n.d. Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu. Asia Research Institute.Google Scholar
Wang, Gungwu. 1998. Ming Foreign Relations: Southeast Asia. In The Cambridge History of China, edited by Twitchett, Denis C. and Mote, Frederick W., Vol. 8, 301–32. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wang, Yuanchong. 2017. Civilizing the Great Qing: Manchu-Korean Relations and the Reconstruction of the Chinese Empire, 1644–1761. Late Imperial China 38 (1):113–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitmore, John K. 1984. Social Organization and Confucian Thought in Vietnam. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 15 (2):296306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolters, O.W. 1968. Ayudhya and the Rearward Part of the World. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 3/4:166–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woodside, Alexander. 1971. Vietnam and the Chinese Model: A Comparative Study of Vietnamese and Chinese Government in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Woodside, Alexander. 1998. Territorial Order and Collective-Identity Tensions in Confucian Asia: China, Vietnam, Korea. Dædalus 127 (2):191220.Google Scholar
Wyatt, David K. 1984. Thailand: A Short History. Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Wyatt, David K. 1997. Southeast Asia “Inside-Out,” 1300–1800: A Perspective from the Interior. Modern Asian Studies 31 (3):689709.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yoshiteru, Iwamoto, and Bytheway, Simon J.. 2011. Japan's Official Relations with Shamuro (Siam), 1599–1745: As Revealed in the Diplomatic Records of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Journal of the Siam Society 99:81102.Google Scholar
Yu, Insun. 2009. Vietnam-China Relations in the Nineteenth Century: Myth and Reality of the Tributary System. Journal of Northeast Asian History 6 (1):81117.Google Scholar
Zarakol, Ayşe. 2011. After Defeat: How the East Learned to Live with the West. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Zhang, Feng. 2015. Chinese Hegemony: Grand Strategy and International Institutions in East Asian History. Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Zhang, Yongjin, and Buzan, Barry. 2012. The Tributary System as International Society in Theory and Practice. Chinese Journal of International Politics 5 (1):336.CrossRefGoogle Scholar