Contesting the Confucian peace: Civilization, barbarism and international hierarchy in East Asia
| Author | Andrew Phillips |
| Published date | 01 December 2018 |
| Date | 01 December 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1354066117716265 |
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066117716265
European Journal of
International Relations
2018, Vol. 24(4) 740 –764
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1354066117716265
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Contesting the Confucian
peace: Civilization, barbarism
and international hierarchy in
East Asia
Andrew Phillips
University of Queensland, Australia
Abstract
International Relations scholars have turned to China’s tributary system to broaden
our understanding of international systems beyond the ‘states-under-anarchy’
model derived from European history. This scholarship forms the inspiration and
foil for this article, which refines International Relations scholars’ conceptualizations
of how international hierarchy arose and endured in East Asia during the Manchu
Qing Dynasty — China’s last and most territorially expansive imperial dynasty. I
argue that existing conceptions of East Asian hierarchy overstate the importance
of mutual identification between the region’s Confucian monarchies in sustaining
Chinese hegemony. Instead, we can understand Qing China’s dominance only once
we recognize the Manchus as a ‘barbarian’ dynasty, which faced unique challenges
legitimating its rule domestically and internationally. As ‘barbarian’ conquerors,
Manchus did not secure their rule by simply conforming to pre-existing Sinic
cultural norms. Instead, like other contemporary Eurasian empires, they maintained
dominance through strategies of heterogeneous contracting. Domestically, they
developed customized legitimacy scripts tailored to win the allegiance of the
empire’s diverse communities. Internationally, meanwhile, the Manchus strategically
appropriated existing Confucian norms and practices of tributary diplomacy in ways
that mitigated — but did not eliminate — Confucian vassals’ resentment of ‘barbarian’
domination. East Asian hierarchy may have been more peaceful than Westphalian
anarchy, but the absence of war masks a more coercive reality where the appearance
of Confucian conformity obscured more fractious relations between Qing China and
even its ostensibly most loyal vassals.
Corresponding author:
Andrew Phillips, c/o School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland, St Lucia,
Queensland 4072, Australia.
Email: andrew.phillips@uq.edu.au
716265EJT0010.1177/1354066117716265European Journal of International RelationsPhillips
research-article2017
Article
Phillips 741
Keywords
China, hegemony, historical sociology, international history, international order,
international system, state system
Introduction
The past decade has seen surging academic interest in East Asian international relations.
Pioneering works by scholars including David Kang, Victoria tin-bor Hui and Robert
Kelly have demolished the idea that we can distil universal claims about world politics
from Europe’s historical experience (Hui, 2005; Kang, 2010a, 2010b, 2014; Kang et al.,
2016; Kelly, 2012). Claims that balancing naturally predominates over bandwagoning,
and that international relations can be understood solely as a realm of violent competition
between anarchic self-contained units, have crumbled under East Asianists’ scrutiny.
Drawing from East Asia’s divergent historical experience, East Asianists have
revealed a very different world. In Sino-centric East Asia, hierarchy rather than anarchy
predominated as the international system’s organizing principle (Kang, 2010a, 2010b).
Likewise, stable relations of authority and deference — underpinned by a shared sense
of ‘Confucian we-ness’ (Kelly, 2012: 413) — supposedly distinguished East Asia from
Europe’s bloody history of confessional division and violent balance-of-power politics
(Kang, 2010a, 2010b; Kelly, 2012; Zhang, 2001).
Studies of East Asian hierarchy have undeniably unsettled International Relations’
(IR’s) Eurocentrism. However, existing accounts of East Asian hierarchy exaggerate its
peacefulness, and mis-specify the role that Confucian norms and tributary diplomatic
practices played in its constitution. An important strand of scholarship — advancing
what I dub the Confucian Peace Thesis (CPT) — posits the existence of a ‘warm’ peace
between China and its Confucian neighbours. This peace supposedly rested on cultural
affinity and mutual identification between Confucian polities, and correspondingly con-
gruent conceptions of legitimacy that stabilized a hierarchy of authority and deference
between China and its Confucian tributaries.
This article accepts the existence of a ‘Confucian peace’ — understood as the absence
of overt war between Confucian polities — as an unassailable reality. I also accept CPT
scholars’ causal argument for a ‘Confucian peace’ resting on genuine cultural affinity
during historical epochs, such as the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), when China was ruled
by ‘civilized’ Chinese, and China’s Confucian neighbours willingly submitted to Chinese
suzerainty because of their shared sense of ‘civilized’ collective identity.
By contrast, the ‘Confucian peace’ rested on radically different foundations when
China was ruled by ‘barbarian’ dynasties, such as the Manchu Qing Dynasty (1644–
1912) — China’s last and largest empire. Labouring under the ‘barbarian’ stigma, con-
quest dynasties like the Manchus could not rely on the ‘Confucian we-ness’ (Kelly, 2012:
413) that underwrote a ‘warm’ peace with China’s Confucian neighbours under ‘civi-
lized’ dynasties. Nor, however, could they afford to simply ignore the normative pur-
chase of Confucian ideas and tributary practices in mediating China’s relations with
Confucian polities, and the strategic benefit of winning these polities’ outward allegiance
through symbolic conformity to Confucian hierarchy.
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