Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EcoDip-SEA (Encountering Diplomacy in Early Modern Southeast Asia)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2021-05-01 al 2023-04-30
While Southeast Asian ports have emerged as a favoured site for studying cultural encounters, little is known about how transregional interactions shaped the principles of cross-cultural political communication necessary to forge alliances and set up lasting collaborations between different interest groups. Moreover, local elements and trans-regional links to the greater Sinosphere and the Indian Ocean world remain understudied. EcoDip has significantly reshaped our understanding of early modern Asian diplomacy.
EcoDip SEA has studied negotiation practices and diplomatic exchange between domains in insular Southeast Asia and the Spanish, Portuguese and the Dutch as aspiring imperial powers. Looking at learning processes and considering how mediation between a multitude of plural actors affected the spread of different concepts and different modes of governing, EcoDip SEA contributed to a new understanding of developing diplomatic relations and changing international systems. For that purpose, it explored how local Southeast Asian agencies and indigenous traditions shaped diplomatic practices. Thus, the study challenged stereotypical narratives of rivalry and conflict, military superiority and indigenous passivity. EcoDip provides informed and empirically sound answers about questions of in/commensurability of concepts and practices, circulation of knowledge, appropriation and accommodation.
The overall objectives are the dissemination of new research results to diverse audiences and the beneficiary's career development. The project resulted in four peer-reviewed open-access publications (two journal articles, and two handbook articles), a book chapter, an edited volume, and several public outreach deliverables including 18 conference papers (see below). The project helped to develop the research field of global diplomacy, notably with the establishment of the Global Diplomacy Network which currently has over 100 members and hosts regular online events.
EcoDip has explored the dynamics behind global diplomacy and knowledge in Asian maritime empires between the sixteenth and the eighteenth century. Various episodes of diplomatic exchange between provided a rich resource for an analysis of how global diplomatic agents co-produced material objects, images, and written records which in turn impacted politics and trade relations. The project made four important interventions in the burgeoning field of new diplomatic history. First, it sheds light on certain aspects of growing research on Asian diplomatic encounters connecting the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia; second, it offers insights into the manifold actors involved in creating and negotiating knowledge; third, it highlights the epistemological importance of the visual and material archives for the study of global diplomacy in the early modern period; and fourth, it challenges narratives of cross-cultural foreign relations which tend to overemphasize asymmetrical and confessional explanations.
The study has widely disseminated non-European avenues of writing and thinking about inter-polity relations and introduced a variety of diplomatic actors to a diverse audience.
EcoDip SEA has studied negotiation practices and diplomatic exchange between domains in insular Southeast Asia and the Spanish, Portuguese and the Dutch as aspiring imperial powers. Looking at learning processes and considering how mediation between a multitude of plural actors affected the spread of different concepts and different modes of governing, EcoDip SEA contributed to a new understanding of developing diplomatic relations and changing international systems. For that purpose, it explored how local Southeast Asian agencies and indigenous traditions shaped diplomatic practices. Thus, the study challenged stereotypical narratives of rivalry and conflict, military superiority and indigenous passivity. EcoDip provides informed and empirically sound answers about questions of in/commensurability of concepts and practices, circulation of knowledge, appropriation and accommodation.
The overall objectives are the dissemination of new research results to diverse audiences and the beneficiary's career development. The project resulted in four peer-reviewed open-access publications (two journal articles, and two handbook articles), a book chapter, an edited volume, and several public outreach deliverables including 18 conference papers (see below). The project helped to develop the research field of global diplomacy, notably with the establishment of the Global Diplomacy Network which currently has over 100 members and hosts regular online events.
EcoDip has explored the dynamics behind global diplomacy and knowledge in Asian maritime empires between the sixteenth and the eighteenth century. Various episodes of diplomatic exchange between provided a rich resource for an analysis of how global diplomatic agents co-produced material objects, images, and written records which in turn impacted politics and trade relations. The project made four important interventions in the burgeoning field of new diplomatic history. First, it sheds light on certain aspects of growing research on Asian diplomatic encounters connecting the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia; second, it offers insights into the manifold actors involved in creating and negotiating knowledge; third, it highlights the epistemological importance of the visual and material archives for the study of global diplomacy in the early modern period; and fourth, it challenges narratives of cross-cultural foreign relations which tend to overemphasize asymmetrical and confessional explanations.
The study has widely disseminated non-European avenues of writing and thinking about inter-polity relations and introduced a variety of diplomatic actors to a diverse audience.
(1) The article “The elephant in the archive. Knowledge construction and late eighteenth-century global diplomacy” published with Itinerario (CUP; forthc. in 2023)
(2) The article “Multiple Actors and Pluralistic Practices: Non-European Perspectives on Early Modern Diplomatic Relations is a contribution to the Handbook Early Modern European Diplomacy edited by D. Goetze/L. Oezel focuses on the principles of intercultural foreign relations and their management in Afro-Eurasia and the Atlantic world.
(3) The article “Rethinking colonialism through early modern global diplomacy” has been accepted for publication in the prestigious Journal of Global History (CUP; forthc. in 2023).
(4) A chapter about “Religious Actors” to the Oxford Handbook of the Cultural History of Global Diplomacy, c.1750-2000 (edited by N. Shimazu and C. Goeschel, forthcoming in 2024), discusses religious diplomatic actors from a global perspective.
(5) The book chapter “Perception and Self-Representation of Friars Serving as Adhoc envoys in early modern Asia 1574-1662” published in Das diplomatische Selbst in der Frühen Neuzeit/The Diplomatic Sef in Early Modern Times: Verhandlungsstrategien Erzählweisen Beziehungsdynamiken/Negotiating Narrating Shaping Relations, ed. J. Gebke, S. Mai, C. Muigg, (Münster, 2022) approaches the profile of a specific group of diplomatic actors through their own accounts
(6) In September 2022, the beneficiary of EcoDip SEA has been recruited as volume co-editor for Volume V of the Cultural History of Southeast Asia, published by Bloomsbury. This is a highly responsible task in the field of Southeast Asian history and allows to decenter the state of the art by promoting promising scholars including those based in the region.
A major milestone for EcoDip SEA was the organization of an international conference on Communicating Diplomacy organized in collaboration with the Global Diplomacy Network was held on 30 Nov 2022 – 1 Dec 2022 at SCAS Uppsala. The conference was held as a hybrid conference with participants from fifteen countries in Asia, Europe, and America, joining either on-site or online.
(7) Final revision of the monograph "Translating negotiations or negotiating imperialism? Murakami Naojirō and the making of the history of diplomacy" forthcoming with Cambridge University Press in 2024.
(2) The article “Multiple Actors and Pluralistic Practices: Non-European Perspectives on Early Modern Diplomatic Relations is a contribution to the Handbook Early Modern European Diplomacy edited by D. Goetze/L. Oezel focuses on the principles of intercultural foreign relations and their management in Afro-Eurasia and the Atlantic world.
(3) The article “Rethinking colonialism through early modern global diplomacy” has been accepted for publication in the prestigious Journal of Global History (CUP; forthc. in 2023).
(4) A chapter about “Religious Actors” to the Oxford Handbook of the Cultural History of Global Diplomacy, c.1750-2000 (edited by N. Shimazu and C. Goeschel, forthcoming in 2024), discusses religious diplomatic actors from a global perspective.
(5) The book chapter “Perception and Self-Representation of Friars Serving as Adhoc envoys in early modern Asia 1574-1662” published in Das diplomatische Selbst in der Frühen Neuzeit/The Diplomatic Sef in Early Modern Times: Verhandlungsstrategien Erzählweisen Beziehungsdynamiken/Negotiating Narrating Shaping Relations, ed. J. Gebke, S. Mai, C. Muigg, (Münster, 2022) approaches the profile of a specific group of diplomatic actors through their own accounts
(6) In September 2022, the beneficiary of EcoDip SEA has been recruited as volume co-editor for Volume V of the Cultural History of Southeast Asia, published by Bloomsbury. This is a highly responsible task in the field of Southeast Asian history and allows to decenter the state of the art by promoting promising scholars including those based in the region.
A major milestone for EcoDip SEA was the organization of an international conference on Communicating Diplomacy organized in collaboration with the Global Diplomacy Network was held on 30 Nov 2022 – 1 Dec 2022 at SCAS Uppsala. The conference was held as a hybrid conference with participants from fifteen countries in Asia, Europe, and America, joining either on-site or online.
(7) Final revision of the monograph "Translating negotiations or negotiating imperialism? Murakami Naojirō and the making of the history of diplomacy" forthcoming with Cambridge University Press in 2024.
The four most important achievements are (1) the promotion to docent (reader/associate professor) in December 2022, (2) the appointment for a permanent tenure-track position in global history at Stockholm University, (3) the appointment of supervisor for two PhD students, and (4) the appointment as a researcher to the international research program Historical Treaties in Southeast Asia funded by the Swedish Research Council.
Public Outreach and Communication
(1) The Blog
The public outreach related to EcoDip SEA includes an IIAS Blog New Diplomatic History of Southeast Asia hosted by the International Institute for Asian Studies and comprises twelve conversations with experts in the field of Southeast Asian diplomatic history. See, https://blog.iias.asia/diplomacy-southeast-asia(si apre in una nuova finestra)
(2) Podcasts
The project moreover includes two podcast interviews.
Humpodd (LNU): “Diplomati in den global historian” (19 May 2021); Speed date for the Connected Histories of Capitalism on the year 1641 (June 2021)
(3) As part of the project, the beneficiary co-created Global Archives Online designed to identify and locate open resources for the study of and research on colonial and global history. methodology for global history.
(4)Teaching material / Benefit-sharing
In the course of the project, EcoDip shared research results with students at the Asian Center of the University of the Philippines, Diliman and with students of East Asian Studies at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid on several occasions.
(5)The beneficiary is currently preparing a research report article on eighteenth-century elephant diplomacy for The Conversation partly based on my research article to be published with Itinerario.
Public Outreach and Communication
(1) The Blog
The public outreach related to EcoDip SEA includes an IIAS Blog New Diplomatic History of Southeast Asia hosted by the International Institute for Asian Studies and comprises twelve conversations with experts in the field of Southeast Asian diplomatic history. See, https://blog.iias.asia/diplomacy-southeast-asia(si apre in una nuova finestra)
(2) Podcasts
The project moreover includes two podcast interviews.
Humpodd (LNU): “Diplomati in den global historian” (19 May 2021); Speed date for the Connected Histories of Capitalism on the year 1641 (June 2021)
(3) As part of the project, the beneficiary co-created Global Archives Online designed to identify and locate open resources for the study of and research on colonial and global history. methodology for global history.
(4)Teaching material / Benefit-sharing
In the course of the project, EcoDip shared research results with students at the Asian Center of the University of the Philippines, Diliman and with students of East Asian Studies at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid on several occasions.
(5)The beneficiary is currently preparing a research report article on eighteenth-century elephant diplomacy for The Conversation partly based on my research article to be published with Itinerario.