Why should we take visual sources more seriously in our study of global diplomacy? The innovative approach presented in this volume involves using a wide range of visual sources, such as photographs, paintings, films, and material culture, to reveal how these sources can help to illuminate symbolic aspects of diplomacy that textual sources alone may not be able to do. Visual sources can reveal hidden stories and, importantly, help to de-centre the prevailing preconceptions about the nature of global diplomacy and its power dynamics. The unravelling of symbolisms can add cultural depth to the staging of global diplomacy. The approach introduces a host of diplomatic actors often neglected by scholars, including Southeast Asian leaders, female personalities, and crowds of onlookers. Each chapter, which includes examples of intra-Asia diplomacy as well as Asian diplomacy with Western societies, demonstrates the critical role played by visual sources to the field of diplomatic culture.

The striking image of three local Chinese women spectators at the Bandung Conference of 1955 was taken by Lisa Larsen, who was a photographer commissioned by LIFE magazine to cover the conference. What does this photograph tell us about international diplomacy? Was it a coincidence that the female photographer happened to take one of the most visually arresting photographs of women as diplomatic spectators? This chapter proposes to probe further the significance of gender in constructing images of international diplomacy. In general, visual sources of international diplomacy tend to portray women in multiple capacities as actors on the international stage. However, this stands in stark contrast to textual sources, which reveal very little female agency, mostly due to the narrowly defined notions of who constitutes a diplomatic actor in traditional approaches to studying diplomacy. Elsewhere, the author has argued that the invisibility of women in diplomacy can in itself be seen as a performative stance. In this chapter, she explores how we can ‘recover’ the lost female presence in diplomacy by privileging the female gaze, through the iconic female photographer.

To celebrate the Golden Jubilee of the 1955 Asian-African Conference, the Indonesian government invited 106 states, representing some 4.5 billion people to attend the Asian-African Summit in Bandung and Jakarta in April 2005. Those present celebrated the Dasa Sila Bandung, known in English as the Ten Principles of Bandung. Some eighty-nine countries were represented by Heads of States or ministers. Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan was there, too, with his wife Nane whose dress was monochromatic in the signature light blue of the UN flag, as evidenced in the many photographs of the dignitaries re-enacting the famous walk on Jalan Asia-Afrika (Asia-Africa Road) in Bandung in front of Gedung Merdeka (Freedom Building). On the front row of the ‘walk,’ we see President of PRC Hu Jintao, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yodhoyono, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, with their wives also sharing the moment (see Figure 1 above). Ten years later in 2015, on President Joko Widodo’s invitation to the Second Asian-African Summit, the leaders of the seventy-seven states gathered in Bandung yet again to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Asian-African Conference. Thirty-four states were represented by heads of states and governments, with the Indonesian president, Jokowi, walking side by side with Xi Jinping and Malaysia’s Najib Razak, all with their wives, on the front row. In the twenty-first century, the Global South seems to trace back its collective genesis to that one week in April 1955 when the Asian-African Conference was held in Bandung.

This volume is a critique of the Bandung narrative and the monopolistic position it is seen to occupy in global diplomacy, epitomised by what has been described above. In general, it is critical of the heavily state-centric bias that the Bandung narrative tends to espouse. At the bottom line, the volume positions itself as offering an alternative narrative in the form of ‘Afro-Asianism’, because ‘Bandung’ should not be the only lens through which to conceptualise and understand the highly dynamic and volatile period of decolonisation in the post-war years. The impetus felt by this Collective to challenge the centrality of the Bandung narrative is a welcome development, mostly telling of the changing times, reflecting a major shift in the literature of the last two decades.

On 16 December 1918, the American journalist Walter Duranty wrote for The New York Times:

The above reporting tells us many things: the symbolic linking of Wilson with the French aristocracy, the heroic stature of Wilson amongst Parisians, and added to this the evident smugness that even the French have had to change their old ways and learn to do things in an American way in order to please the President. Indeed, the media covered Wilson's activities with a paparazzi-like zealousness – such as reporting on Wilson being seen at the races, Wilson seen on his daily round of motoring in the Bois de Boulogne, and so on and so forth.