On-site Seminar "(In)commensurable Gifts? Cross-Cultural Diplomacy, Gift-Exchange and Treaty-Making in South and Southeast Asia."

The vibrant diplomatic arena in pre-colonial and colonial Southeast Asia has displayed a wide array of diplomatic practices, which have recently regained prominence in scholarship on the region. This seminar focuses on the central role of gifts in cross-cultural diplomacy and treaty-making, examining how different diplomatic and cultural systems recognized and exchanged gifts, and how these practices either adapted, clashed, or translated across cultural boundaries and influenced political relationships through treaty-making.

We aim to understand how local actors navigated different understandings of gift-exchange. For instance, what qualified as gifts in different diplomatic and cultural contexts, and how did these adapt to each other? How did specific practices of gift-exchange translate from one diplomatic cultural system to another? Answering these questions will help us understand how local actors in their encounters with other transregional powers navigated the (in)commensurability of diplomatic norms. We focus on both material and non-material gifts (titles, recognition, trading rights, etc.) and seek to explore mutual influences between Southeast Asian/Malay-Javanese diplomatic norms and modes of interaction and those of West, South Asia and Southeast Asia – the Ottoman, Arabic, Persian, Mughal, Chinese worlds – and Europeans, and how these interactions were framed by notions of hierarchy, reciprocity.

Building on recent advancements in theorizing gift-exchange within the framework of new diplomatic history, this seminar seeks to push these discussions further through a comparative analysis of empirical cases in Southeast Asia.

The seminar is organized by members from the ‘Historical Treaties of Southeast Asia’-project, which is hosted at Linnaeus University in Sweden and funded by the Swedish Research Council.

Organizers:         Maarten Manse (Linnaeus University)
                            Stefan Amirell (Linnaeus University)
                            Tristan Mostert (Leiden University)