Civilizations in Embrace: The Spread of Ideas and the Transformation of Power; India and Southeast Asia in the Classical Age

Foreword

FOREWORD The name Amitav Acharya needs little introduction to those who are involved with the study of contemporary international relations in Asia. His work on Asian regionalism and particularly that which engages with Southeast Asia and ASEAN brought him initial fame, while his research on international institutions and security arrangements has seen him become even better-known. His longtime penchant for the study of non-Western modes of international relations has, however, always assumed a high prominence in his work, and this has, in recent years, been manifested in various studies including a book of the Bandung Conference and its significance for illuminating international relations in Cold War Asia.1 While engaging with Aaron Friedberg’s thesis which held that Asia is “ripe for rivalry,”2 he has also been questioning why there is an absence of 1 Tan See Seng and Amitav Acharya (eds.). Bandung Revisited: The Legacy of the 1955 Asian-African Conference for International Order (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2008). 2 For which, see Aaron L. Friedberg. “Ripe for Rivalry: Prospects for Peace in a Multipolar Asia”. International Security, vol. 18, no. 3 (Winter 1993/94), pp. 5–33. viii Foreword non-Western international relations theory.3 Debates with scholars such as David Kang on the nature of Asian international relation through time,4 have seen Acharya, among others, exploring how we might portray the interstate and inter-cultural relations of Asia, past and present.5 These and other conversations led to a 2011 conference at the University of Southern California, to investigate “Was there an historical East Asian international system? Impact, meaning, and conceptualization.” This brought together historians and international relations specialists to interrogate possible Asian sources for alternate international relations theory, and to examine whether indeed premodern forms of inter-state relations were different in Asia. The volume before you is, in some ways, a continuance of the ideas explored in these earlier works by Amitav. Its title “Civilizations in Embrace” conveys the overall theme of the volume — that Asian cultures and civilisations engage with each other in ways which are communicative rather than combatative. Amitav aims through this volume to “advance the case for considering alternative models of diffusion of ideas and culture in world politics,” through “one of the most extensive examples of the spread of ideas in the history of civilization; the diffusion of Indian religious and political ideas to Southeast Asia before the advent of Islam and European colonialism.” 3 Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan. “Why is there no non-Western international relations theory? An introduction”. International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, vol. 7, no. 3 (2007), pp. 287–312; and Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan (eds.). Non-Western International Relations Theory: Perspectives on and Beyond Asia. London and New York: Routledge, 2010. 4 David Kang, “Hierarchy, Balancing, and Empirical Puzzles in Asian International Relations”. International Security, vol. 28, issue 3, pp. 165–80. 5 Amitav Acharya, “Will Asia’s Past be its Future?”. International Security, vol. 28, no. 3 (Winter 2003/04), pp. 149–64. ix Foreword Depicting the spread of Indic ideas and systems to Southeast Asia over a period extending from the fourth to fourteenth century to have been “largely peaceful,” the study suggests that there was no clash of civilization between the sources and the recipients of the ideas which were transmitted, and that “the transmission was driven as much by the initiative of local actors as by the cultural entrepreneurship of outsiders.” In sum, Amitav concludes that this example of cultural change through time highlights a “powerful historical precedent for inter-civilizational convergence that upholds the agency of local actors and debunks the notion that the diffusion of ideas can only occur through the mechanisms of power politics.” At the end of the study, the example of Greek expansion in the Mediterranean — the Hellenization of that region — from the sixth century BCE to the beginning of the Common Era, is presented both as a counter-example to Indianization and as the archetype of later European expansions involving invasion and coercive transformation of other peoples. * * * If a thesis is to be accepted, it must be able to withstand critiques. Let us thus take a closer look at this process of diffusion of Indic cultural elements that was allegedly “not accompanied by imperialism, political hegemony or ‘colonization’ as conventionally understood.” That Indic influences permeated Southeast Asia over the period claimed is certainly a truth universally acknowledged...