"Eastphalia" is my tongue-in-cheek name for the early modern East Asian "tribute system."
Article under review--
Reordering the Universe: The Unyō Crisis of 1875 and the Death of Eastphalia.
Abstract:
This article proceeds from the claim that the birth of the Westphalian system of international relations (IR) should be located in the death of its last viable competitor, the so-called East Asian “tribute system,” which constituted a non-nation-state, heterarchical state system. It reframes the induction of East Asia into the modern IR system as a systemic harmonization beyond the control of any single party, rather than as a triumph of Western liberalism as some have previously claimed. Not only does this article contribute to a non-Eurocentric pluralization of IR by offering a new narrative of its origins which acknowledges the constructive roles played by non-Westerners; it also suggests that our contemporary political choices are limited by our failure to recognize how modern IR’s violent formation and naturalized claims to inevitable universality rely on multiple destructions and erasures of alternatives. The analytical focal point of this article is the case study that provides the date for the death of the tribute system, which I call “Eastphalia”: the 1875 Unyō crisis between Korea and Japan.
Keywords: early modern East Asia, Westphalia, international systems, tribute system