Research & Writing

Global Historical International Relations

Dengler, Frieder G. “Studying Historical International Orders through System Encounters.” Review of International Studies, 2026, 1-20.

How can we explain interactions between historical international orders? Despite growing interest in the role of marginal interactions in the evolution of international orders, scholars struggle to account for their contingency. Enduring commitments to substantialist approaches limit our ability to theorize the link between micro-level interactions in system encounters and macro-level international order, and vice versa. I argue that conflicts in system encounters can be explained as manifestations of a process through which international orders and their differences are constituted and negotiated. International orders and their differences exist in concrete instantiations only in the context of system encounters. Building on a practice-relational approach to international order, I propose that system encounters are characterized by a series of crises that challenge the taken-for-granted nature of established practices, prompting actors to articulate the relevant differences between them. I illustrate this process in the context of the Russian, Dutch, and British embassies to China during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and show how the relevant differences between the East Asian and European international orders can be reconstructed from those interactions. This paper advances the study of historical international orders and has important implications for how we think about conflicts in system encounters.

System Encounters: Diplomatic Practice and International Order in Early Modern Sino-European Relations (book manuscript, in progress)

How do actors embedded in distinct international orders manage their differences? My book manuscript (based on my dissertation) examines Russian, Dutch, and British embassies to China during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as encounters between distinct international orders in East Asia and Europe—system encounters. Drawing on historiography and published collections of primary sources in multiple languages, I use qualitative text-based analysis to reconstruct the meaning and social effects of diplomatic practices in interactions between the Chinese imperial court and European envoys, and demonstrate how differences in those practices shaped the dynamics and outcomes of encounters. I argue that encounters between diplomatic practices create space for agency by presenting actors with specific manifestations of their differences to which actors respond pragmatically by creating conditions under which challenges can be resolved without significantly altering established practices. My findings present relevant context for Sino-European relations in the nineteenth century and have important implications for our understanding of the role of system encounters in the evolution of a globalizing international order. I am working on an additional chapter that explores the implications of my findings for negotiating between competing visions of international order in U.S.-China relations today.

I gratefully acknowledge financial support for my research on this project up to this point from the U.S.-Asia Grand Strategy Program at the University of Southern California (2023-2024), the United States Institute of Peace (2023-2024), and the International Studies Association (2023).

System Encounters: Sino-Russian Relations, 1618-1689 (draft available upon request)

Examining the onset of Sino-Russian relations in the seventeenth century, this paper develops an explanation of how polities embedded in distinct international orders manage their differences. Building on a practice-relational approach to international orders as relational configurations between polities that are simultaneously governed by and constituted through diplomatic practices, I propose that polities manage differences in system encounters by responding pragmatically to specific manifestations of those differences. System encounters constitute problem situations in which established practices are inadequate for ‘going on’. Polities respond pragmatically to these challenges by creating conditions under which established practices can be maintained, rather than by developing new practices based on shared understanding. Drawing on journals, reports, and collections of documents detailing interactions between Russian envoys and Chinese officials, I demonstrate how differences between established practices manifested in disagreements over the nature of diplomatic relations. I then show that the Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689) created conditions under which multivocal interpretation permitted the maintenance of established practices and hence the continuous reconstitution of distinct international orders. These findings have important implications for the evolution and comparative study of international orders and provide crucial context for our understanding of Sino-European relations prior to the nineteenth century.

An earlier draft of this paper was shortlisted for the Barbara W. Tuchman Prize for Best Graduate Student Paper by the Historical International Relations Section of the International Studies Association (2021).