The Eastern cousins of European sovereign states? The development of linear borders in early modern Japan
| Published date | 01 June 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13540661221133206 |
| Author | Naosuke Mukoyama |
| Date | 01 June 2023 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/13540661221133206
European Journal of
International Relations
2023, Vol. 29(2) 255 –282
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/13540661221133206
journals.sagepub.com/home/ejt
E
JR
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The Eastern cousins of
European sovereign states?
The development of linear
borders in early modern Japan
Naosuke Mukoyama
The University of Tokyo, Japan
Abstract
The conventional accounts of the history of the sovereign state system assume that
territorial sovereignty originated in Europe and spread to the rest of the world
through colonial expansion. This implies that territory, which is a core feature of the
modern state, and more specifically, linear borders, had not existed outside Europe
before other societies encountered the West. Focusing on early modern Japan, this
article challenges that assumption by showing that there was a similar territorial order
outside Europe that developed in parallel with its European counterpart. Through an
investigation of boundary disputes, boundary markers, and map-making during the Edo
period (1603–1868), it demonstrates that linear borders were not foreign to early
modern Japan. Domains in Edo Japan were already well into the process of building a
territorial order with demarcated borders and mutual exclusion. This article contributes
to International Relations scholarship by addressing the “Westphalian myth” from a
geographical rather than temporal perspective and shifting the focus of the study of
non-Western international systems from differences to similarities. It also suggests a
potential revision of scholarly understandings of discontinuity before and after the Meiji
Restoration in Japan.
Keywords
Linear borders, sovereignty, territory, boundary, Japan, non-Western
Corresponding author:
Naosuke Mukoyama, Institute for Future Initiatives, The University of Tokyo, Ito International Research
Center, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033 Japan.
Email: nmukoyama@ifi.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Twitter: @naomukoyama
1133206EJT0010.1177/13540661221133206European Journal of International RelationsMukoyama
research-article2022
Article
256 European Journal of International Relations 29(2)
Introduction
The number of sovereign states, which students of International Relations (IR) consider
as basic units of analysis, totals nearly 200 today. This number is believed to have been
far smaller; according to the Correlates of War dataset, there were only 23 entities that
qualified as states in 1816, 1 year after the Congress of Vienna.1 Scholars believe that
territorial sovereignty originated in Europe and that the rest of the world was incorpo-
rated into the sovereign state system through colonization and decolonization (Bull and
Watson, 1984; Spruyt, 2005). Before the arrival of European colonizers, people outside
Europe lived in various political entities, including empires, tributary states, and tribal
structures (Kang, 2010; Spruyt, 2020; Suzuki et al., 2014). Although there was consider-
able diversity in their forms, these polities had one thing in common: they were not
sovereign states.
A central feature of the sovereign state is a territory that is clearly defined by linear
borders. Therefore, as non-sovereigns, non-European polities before they encountered
European powers have largely been thought to lack ideas and practice of territory.
Although some recent scholarship has investigated the development of different aspects
of territory, pointing out that some are not unique to Europe (Branch, 2014; Goettlich,
2019; Kadercan, 2017), scholars still largely assume that linear borders did not exist
outside Europe until the age of colonialism. Unlike in Europe, this view posits that
authorities in the rest of the world exercised political rule over people, rather than lands,
and space was a collection of places, not an area demarcated by borders. Only after
Europe developed the sovereign state system and expanded into the rest of the world did
non-European polities begin to acquire the traits of the sovereign state.
However, the conventional understanding of the history of the sovereign state system
has recently received criticism. In addition to works that debunk the “Westphalian myth”
by showing that the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 had little to do with modern sovereignty
and that Europe itself integrated fully into the sovereign international order only in the
19th century (de Carvalho et al., 2011; Osiander, 2001; Teschke, 2003), scholars have
highlighted the well-known Eurocentric bias in IR (Acharya and Buzan, 2010). There
has been little research on historical non-European polities, particularly in the context of
the emergence and expansion of the sovereign state system. Therefore, the “Europe first,
non-Europe later” thesis is less of an established historical fact than an assumption that
needs to be tested by empirical evidence based on an examination of actual cases.
Against the backdrop of these recent developments, this article investigates with his-
torical evidence whether the development of territory demarcated by linear borders was
unique to Europe focusing on the case of Edo Japan (1603–1868). Following historians
of Japan, it sees early modern Japan as an international system whose basic units were
domains that retained significant autonomy from the Tokugawa shogunate (Howell,
1998; Ravina, 1995). It demonstrates that even before the modern period, Japanese
domains were already well into the process of building a territorial order in which linear
borders separated units.
This article contributes to the existing scholarship in three ways. First, together with
recent studies on the timing of the consolidation of the sovereign international order, this
study revises a conventional assumption of the history of the sovereign state system. It
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