scholarly journals BRUSH TALK AS THE ‘LINGUA FRANCA’ OF DIPLOMACY IN JAPANESE–KOREAN ENCOUNTERS, c. 1600–1868

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 289-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
REBEKAH CLEMENTS
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Diplomatic History ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Factual Content ◽  
Bureaucratic State ◽  
Official Records

AbstractThe study of early modern diplomatic history has in recent decades expanded beyond a bureaucratic, state-centric focus to consider the processes and personal interactions by which international relations were maintained. Scholars have begun to consider, among other factors, the role of diplomatic gifts, diplomatic hospitality, and diplomatic culture. This article contributes to this discussion from an East Asian perspective by considering the role of ‘brush talk’ – written exchanges of classical, literary Chinese – during diplomatic missions from the Korean Chosŏn court to the Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan during the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. Drawing upon official records, personal diaries, and illustrations, I argue that brush talk was not an official part of diplomatic ceremony and that brushed encounters with Korean officials even extended to people of the townsman classes. Brush talk was as much about ritual display, calligraphic art, and drawing upon a shared storehouse of civilized learning as it was about communicating factual content through language. These visual, performative aspects of brush talk in East Asian diplomacy take it beyond the realm of how alingua francais usually conceived, adding to the growing body of scholarship on how this concept applies to non-Western histories.

scholarly journals François Fénelon: Modern philosopher or conservative theologian?

2021 ◽  
pp. 147488512110020
Author(s):  
Alexandra Oprea
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Education Of Women ◽  
Political Philosopher

Ryan Patrick Hanley makes two original claims about François Fénelon: (1) that he is best regarded as a political philosopher, and (2) that his political philosophy is best understood as “moderate and modern.” In what follows, I raise two concerns about Hanley’s revisionist turn. First, I argue that the role of philosophy in Fénelon’s account is rather as a handmaiden of theology than as an autonomous area of inquiry—with implications for both the theory and practice of politics. Second, I use Fénelon’s writings on the education of women as an illustration of the more radical and reactionary aspects of his thought. Despite these limits, the book makes a compelling case for recovering Fénelon and opens up new conversations about education, religion, political economy, and international relations in early modern political thought.

The Transnational Archive of the Sinosphere: The Early Modern East Asian Information Order

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kiri Paramore
Keyword(s):  
Information Systems ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Chinese Language ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Global History ◽  
Early Modern Japan ◽  
Information Order ◽  
Modern Information

This chapter argues for the existence of an intellectually Confucian-centred, Classical Chinese language delivered archive of knowledge across early modern East Asia. I argue that this broad, transferable, and often commercially delivered Sinosphere archive supported the creation of state-led information orders in early modern East Asia. This argument resonates with recent work in South Asian and Global History demonstrating the role of regional early modern information orders in facilitating global flows of knowledge. I focus particularly on the transregional nature of the literary, pedagogical, and book culture that underlay the information order of early modern East Asia, and the state’s prime role in its development in early modern Japan. The article thus employs the concept of archivality to analyse early modern information systems, demonstrating patterns of trans-regional knowledge development in East Asia which resonate with other early modern global examples.

The First World War and the Institutionalization of International Relations as an Academic Discipline

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 58-64
Author(s):  
Veronika Stoilova
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Diplomatic History ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
Military Alliances ◽  
The Us ◽  
National Governments

This paper focuses on the stimulating role of WW1 in the process of separation, establishment and institutionalization of international relations (IR) as an academic discipline in its own right. It is well documented that these processes began immediately after 1919 with the creation of IR departments in European and American universities where training in International relations, International law, International politics, and other specific disciplines in the larger area of IR was provided.Our main thesis is that the atrocities of the first European and world catastrophy led to a better understanding of the decisive role which the relations between national governments, and especially the relations between military alliances, played in the world political arena. This, in its turn, led to the realization that these relations should be the prime target of the investigations of specific disciplines which must have their legitimate share in Bachelor, Master and Doctoral programs.In this paper we also examine the significant role of the US President Woodrow Wilson, himself an outstanding academic authority, in International history and relations, and his efforts to raise awareness and to the establishing of IR departments as legitimate entities of university structures. Special emphasis is put on the hopes of the international community that through separating IR from Diplomatic history, Law, Politology and other kin disciplines, under the auspices of which IR had previously existed, the international political life could be significantly ‘humanized’ since the future diplomats, the international and governmental leaders will be trained in the IR departments in the spirit of humanistic values related to peace, stability and prosperity.

China's Hegemony

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ji-Young Lee
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Qing Empire ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
East Asian Language

Many have viewed the tribute system as China's tool for projecting its power and influence in East Asia, treating other actors as passive recipients of Chinese domination. China's Hegemony sheds new light on this system and shows that the international order of Asia's past was not as Sinocentric as conventional wisdom suggests. Instead, throughout the early modern period, Chinese hegemony was accepted, defied, and challenged by its East Asian neighbors at different times, depending on these leaders' strategies for legitimacy among their populations. Focusing on China-Korea-Japan dynamics of East Asian international politics during the Ming and High Qing periods, Ji-Young Lee draws on extensive research of East Asian language sources, including records written by Chinese and Korean tributary envoys. She offers fascinating and rich details of war and peace in Asian international relations, addressing questions such as: why Japan invaded Korea and fought a major war against the Sino-Korean coalition in the late sixteenth century; why Korea attempted to strike at the Ming empire militarily in the late fourteenth century; and how Japan created a miniature tributary order posing as the center of Asia in lieu of the Qing empire in the seventeenth century.

The Price of Friendship

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 117-136
Author(s):  
Maria Salomon Arel
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Building Relationships ◽  
The Social ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Networks Of Support

Abstract This article discusses the gift-giving behaviour of English merchants involved in the Russia trade in the Muscovite era. Drawing on a small, but growing body of historical literature relating to the role of gifts in the cultivation of mutually beneficial relations between people across the social spectrum in early modern Europe, it explores the various ways in which the English deployed the practice of giving to their advantage, both in England and in Russia. In particular, as ‘strangers’ in Russia who operated beyond the parameters of traditional kin- and community-based networks of support, English merchants (and other foreigners, such as their Dutch competitors) needed to both ‘befriend’ Russian clients on the ground in every-day trade and nurture relationships in high places to ensure smooth, profitable, and secure business. As the sources reveal, they engaged in a variety of gift-giving behaviours in building relationships with Russians advantageous to their enterprise.

The Tribute System and the World Imagined in Early Modern East Asia

2021 ◽  
pp. 030582982110506
Author(s):  
Ji-Young Lee
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
East Asia ◽  
East Asian ◽  
International Order ◽  
Rightful Place ◽  
The World ◽  
Tribute System ◽  
International Systems ◽  
Oriented Approach

The field of international relations has long treated the Westphalian system and states in the territorial sovereign sense as the standard or ‘normal’ in IR. The World Imagined by Hendrik Spruyt boldly challenges this habit as the biases of our times and instead brings non-European historical international systems into their rightful place in our study of international order and international relations theorising more generally. Unpacking Spruyt’s discussion of ‘the East Asian interstate society’, the article argues that an in-depth examination of what is known as a ‘tribute system’ and early modern East Asian historical orders richly illuminates the book’s arguments on the heterogeneity and diversity of order-building practices. It also argues that from a practice-oriented approach, the experience of early modern East Asia presents a compelling case that legitimation holds the key to explaining order building processes at both the domestic and international levels, with legitimation at these two levels working in tandem.

scholarly journals ‘Peace with a Woman’s Face’: Women, Social Media and the Colombian Peace Process

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 515-538
Author(s):  
Alexis Henshaw
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Computational Analysis ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Mixed Methods Approach ◽  
Peace Processes ◽  
Peace And Security ◽  
Growing Body

Abstract The idea that men and women approach conflict resolution differently forms the backbone of the international agenda on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) and is supported by a growing body of scholarship in international relations. However, the role of women who represent insurgent groups in peace talks remains understudied, given the relatively rare appearance of such women in peace processes. The present study examines how men and women from the negotiating team of the Revolutionary Armed Forced of Colombia (FARC) engaged in public-facing discourse on Twitter leading up to a referendum on the peace accords in 2016. Using a mixed-methods approach that includes computational analysis and a close reading of social media posts, I demonstrate that women in the FARC’s negotiating team were more successful social media users than their male counterparts and that they offered a distinct contribution to the discourse on peace, centring the relevance of gender and promoting issue linkages like the need to address LGBTI rights.

Transnational Communities and Diasporic Politics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gallia Lindenstrauss
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
Seasonal Workers ◽  
Transnational Communities ◽  
Transnational Community ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Significant Interest ◽  
Modern Analytical

Diasporas are transnational communities that have received significant interest from international relations (IR) scholars. Attempts to conceptualize diaspora as a modern analytical term posed a major challenge in terms of drawing a distinction between people on the move—such as migrants, refugees, and seasonal workers—and people who are diasporic members of a transnational community. There are different categories of diaspora: historical (or classical/core) diasporas, modern (or recent) diasporas, incipient diasporas, state-linked diasporas, and stateless diasporas. A widely used system of categorization distinguishes among victim, trade, labor, and imperial diasporas. Most of the diaspora research done today in IR deals with the relations between diasporas and their host state and state of origin. There is also a growing body of literature on the role of diasporas in conflict and peace in the homeland. Recent studies have focused on ethnonational diasporic communities, especially the relations between diasporic kin groups in the homeland and in other states of residence, as well as their influence on the foreign policy of their host states. The study of diasporas presents a few major challenges. For instance, it forces us to rethink the rubrics of state and of nation, to challenge accepted notions of citizenship, and to question existing conceptualizations of the importance of territoriality. It also exacerbates the fuzziness between inner and outer politics in research and practice.

A Multitude of Actors in Early Modern Diplomacy

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 407-422
Author(s):  
Birgit Tremml-Werner ◽  
Dorothée Goetze
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Diplomatic History ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Geographic Scope ◽  
The Past ◽  
Social Belonging ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Oriented Research

Abstract This special issue has been motivated by the drive to contextualize the role of individuals of various backgrounds in early modern foreign relations. All contributions cover a broad geographic scope and stress the impact of non-European practices and stages for the study of early modern foreign relations. Four thematic articles follow diverse diplomatic actors, ranging from non-elite envoys to chartered companies, Catholic friars and ministers on ships, to foreign courts, and behind their desks. They provide insights into these individual actors’ functions and achievements and raise questions about social belonging and knowledge channels. The introduction below portrays the development of an actor-oriented research angle in the field of New Diplomatic History over the past decades and addresses blurring concepts and over-generalizations. It attempts to redefine the heterogeneous group of early modern diplomatic actors as products of their involvement in political and material struggles, both at home and abroad.

scholarly journals Symbolic Communication in Early Modern Diplomacy: Naval Incidents and the Third Anglo-Dutch War (1667–1672)*

2020 ◽  
Vol 135 (573) ◽  
pp. 337-358
Author(s):  
David Onnekink
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Diplomatic History ◽  
Symbolic Language ◽  
Symbolic Communication ◽  
The Third ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Public Debates

Abstract This article underscores the significance of symbolic communication in early modern international relations. Taking naval incidents during the period leading up to the Third Anglo-Dutch War (1667–72) as a case-study, it shows how the use of imagery constituted an undervalued symbolic language in which vital interests were communicated by diplomats. Moreover, it argues that the way in which these incidents were discussed in diplomatic circles was relevant to and congruous with public debates. It also highlights the often-ignored international dimension of popular disputes. An overall objective is to further the debate on a New Diplomatic History for the early modern period.

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