Research & Writing

Global Historical International Relations

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

How do actors embedded in distinct inter-polity 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 inter-polity orders in East Asia and Europe. Drawing on historiography and published collections of primary sources, I use practice tracing methodology to reconstruct the meaning 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 system encounters in the historical evolution of inter-polity orders. I am working on an additional chapter that explores the implications of my findings for understanding contemporary U.S.-China competition over shaping global rules.

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

‘An affair of State’: Diplomacy in the Constitution of East Asian and European Inter-polity Orders (draft available upon request)

This paper examines encounters between European polities and China during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as sites of inquiry about the character and constitution of distinct inter-polity orders. Prior to the emergence of diplomacy as the exclusive prerogative of sovereign rulers and their representatives and a clearly defined set of practices for the conduct of their relations in late-eighteenth century Europe, the study of inter-polity orders and encounters between them is complicated by the fact that inter-polity relations were frequently conducted by a multitude of actors and were not neatly separable from trade and other forms of interaction. Theorizing inter-polity order as being (re)constituted through the continuous enactment of practices related to representation and recognition, I argue that encounters challenge the taken-for-granted nature of established practices and prompt actors to explicate their implicit meaning. In doing so, encounters play a role in the co-constitution of distinct inter-polity orders and clarify the relevant differences between them. Drawing on sources detailing interactions in the context of the Russian, Dutch, and British embassies to China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I show that actors clearly distinguished between the affairs of state as interactions governed by a specific set of practices and other forms of interaction. I then show that established practices for the management of inter-polity relations informed their behavior in encounters, producing manifestations of the relevant differences between distinct inter-polity orders in East Asia and Europe.This paper contributes to the comparative study of historical inter-polity orders.

“System Encounters: The Pragmatic Reconstitution of Distinct Inter-Polity Orders in Sino-Russian Relations, 1618-1689” (draft available upon request)

Scholars of historical international relations have focused nearly exclusively on the analysis of specific inter-polity orders or their comparative study. Where interactions between distinct inter-polity orders are considered, the interaction process and/or inter-polity order are inadequately theorized. Building on a conception of inter-polity order as relational configurations produced and reproduced through diplomatic practice, this paper outlines a practice-relational approach to studying encounters between polities embedded in distinct inter-polity orders. I propose that established diplomatic practices inform the behavior of actors in system encounters, and how actors make sense of their own actions as well as those of their counterparts. As such, encounters constitute actors as belonging to distinct inter-polity orders and explicate their relevant differences. Finally, actors respond pragmatically to specific manifestations of differences between diplomatic practices. This paper uses evidence from the onset of Sino-Russian relations in the seventeenth century, a previously neglected case in the study of European expansion and Sino-European relations, to illustrate this argument. Analyzing historiography and published collections of primary documents detailing interactions between officials of the Chinese imperial court and Russian envoys, I find that the Treaty of Nerchinsk, a territorial settlement concluded between the Qing and the Tsardom of Russia in 1689, allowed the two empires to manage their affairs through the multivocal interpretation of divergent diplomatic practices. This paper contributes to scholarship on historical inter-polity orders by using a previously neglected case to propose a new argument about the dynamics of pre-modern system encounters.

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.