Empire in Asia: a New Global History

Empire in Asia: A New Global History Volume One From Chinggisid to Qing Edited by Jack Fairey and Brian P. Farrell Contents List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments x Linguistic Conventions xi Notes on Contributors xii Series Introduction: Reordering an Imperial Modern Asia 1 Jack Fairey and Brian P. Farrell Concepts and Historiography 2 D e fi nitions 4 Revisiting Empire in Asia 6 Introduction: Making Imperial Asia 9 Jack Fairey and Brian P. Farrell 1 Inner Asia, 1100s– 1405: The Making of Chinggisid Eurasia 15 Florence Hodous The Nomadic Empires of Inner Asia 15 Formation of the Mongol Empire 16 Building the Empire 19 Imperial Identity 23 A Mandate to Rule the World 26 Legacies of the Mongol Empire 29 Mongol Decline and Successor States 33 2 The Great Ming and East Asia: The World Order of a Han- Centric Chinese Empire, 1368– 1644 43 Jinping Wang Political Legitimacy 44 Imperial Governance 48 Monarchy and Bureaucracy 48 Community 52 Frontier Management 55 Foreign Relations with Other East Asian States 63 Conclusion 69 Contents 3 East Asia under the Expanding Qing 77 Frederik Vermote Introduction 77 Jurchen Origins 79 Formation of the Manchus 80 Imperial Consolidation and Expansion 84 Institutions of Empire 85 The Banner System 85 Manchu Language 87 Government Ministries 90 Control of Frontiers and Subjects 92 The Qing in Decline 97 Qing Legacies 98 4 Southwest Asia, 1300– 1800: Ottomans, Safavids, and the Turco- Persianate Imperial Tradition 107 Jack Fairey Introduction 107 History of the Imperial Idea: Persia 107 History of the Imperial Idea: Greco- Roman World 108 History of the Imperial Idea: Caliphate 110 The T ü rkmen Dynasties 111 Ottomans: From Beylik to Sultanate 113 Ottomans: Imperialism as Crisis Management 115 Safavids: From Sufi Ṭ ar ī qah to Millenarian Empire 116 Imperial Self- Understanding 120 Imperial Visions of World Order 125 Borderlands 127 Institutions 129 Ottoman and Safavid Legacies 131 5 South Asia, 1400– 1800: The Mughal Empire and the Turco- Persianate Imperial Tradition in the Indian Subcontinent 141 Murari Kumar Jha Introduction 141 Mughal Conquests and Imperial Expansion 142 Structure and Institutions of the Mughal Empire 145 Process of Decline 148 The South Asian Context of Mughal Notions of Kingship and Sovereignty 150 Mughal Imperial Ideas and the Articulation of Legitimacy 152 Mughal Interactions with Other Empires 157 Legacy of the Mughal Empire 161 vi Contents 6 Northern Eurasia, 1300– 1800: Russian Imperial Practice from Tsardom to Empire 171 Paul W. Werth Introduction 171 Russia, Asia, Europe 172 The Rise and Growth of Muscovy: A Brief Sketch 174 Legitimation and Imaginings 176 Motivations 180 Institutions and Practices 183 Conclusion 190 7 In Search of “Empire” in Mainland Southeast Asia 195 Bruce M. Lockhart Introduction 195 Historiographical Overview 195 Toward a Synthesis 199 Kingship and Ideology 206 Comparative Observations 208 8 In Search of “Empire” in the Insular Malay World 215 Sher Banu Khan Srivijaya, 700– 1400: Seventh- Century “Harbor City” or “Imperial Construct”? 217 Melaka, 1400– 1600: Islamic City- State or a Global Malay/ Islamic Center? 220 State-Formation and the Creation of “Absolutist States” in Insular Southeast Asia, ca. 1500– 1700: Toward “Genuine Empire Formation”? 222 The Beginnings of “Empire- Building” in Insular Southeast Asia? The Case of Aceh 223 The Beginnings of “Empire- Building” in Insular Southeast Asia? The Case of Johor 228 Mainland/ Island Southeast Asia Dichotomy: A Case Study of Success and Failure in the Empire Project? 231 9 Iberian Maritime Asia, 1497– 1700s: The Portuguese and Spanish Empires in Asia 239 Anthony Rendell Disney Introduction 239 The Hybrid Character of the Iberian Empires: Seaborne, Maritime, and Territorial 240 Transportation Networks 240 vii Contents Networks of Trade 241 Catholic Mission Networks 244 Formal Imperium and Territorial Empire 246 The Iberian Empires and the Great Powers of Asia 249 The Spanish Territorial Empire in the Philippines 251 Informal Conquests and Freelance Conquistadore s 252 Imperial Lines of Defense 253 Social Interaction and Cultural Exchange 253 The Iberians and the Other European Empires in Asia 257 Twilight of Empire 259 Conclusion 260 10 Chartered Companies and Empire 269 Peter Borschberg Introduction 269 Research 272 What Is a Chartered Company? 273 Era of the East India Companies 275 Why Companies? 277 Were the East India Companies Successful? 278 Importance of the Charter Territory 280 Were All Chartered Companies Instruments of Empire? 281 From Companies to Company States 283 Legacies of the Chartered Companies 287 Index 295 viii Series Introduction: Reordering an Imperial Modern Asia Jack Fairey and Brian P. Farrell In the Asia of the twenty-fi rst century, Japan is the only state still headed by a fi gure referred to in English as an “emperor” (tenn ō ). The title is understood by all, however, to be an anachronism, given that Japan no longer professes itself an empire.1 Everywhere else in the world, explicitly imperial titles and forms of governance have more or less disappeared. “Empire” itself has become a dirty word, applied to existing states primarily in order to condemn and revile them. And yet, this is a very recent state of affairs. Historically, more Asians have lived under imperial rule than under any other form of political organization and for longer periods of time. There is not a single Asian region, state, or people whose history has not been shaped in decisive ways by these experiences. It is precisely the diversity of imperial forms of governance present in Asia— and the corresponding wealth of political terms in different Asian languages— that has tended to obscure the full extent of the impact of empire, as a political form, on the region. Beyond the impact of empires on individual states and peoples, it has played a critical role in framing the larger history— spatial, cultural, economic, and especially political— of the region. Empires thus have not only helped to defi ne modern Asia but also to mediate and connect its inhabitants to the wider world, long before the era of instantaneous mass electronic communications. Does the foregoing mean there is something inherently “Asian” about empires in Asia? The question is, of course, fl awed from the outset inasmuch as it presupposes a monolithic “Asia” that has never existed. The inherent fallacy of the question, however, has not prevented a long line of European political theorists from answering it in the affi rmative. Beginning in Classical Greece, writers such as Herodotus, Aeschylus, and Aristotle considered empire to be a characteristically “Asiatic” form of rule— a generalization made slightly more pardonable by the stark contrast that existed then between the turbulent and fragmented world of the Greek city- states and the absolutist and universal monarchs of Achaemenid Persia and Pharaonic Egypt.2 The notion that a fundamental distinction existed between the freedom- loving peoples of Europe and the slavish masses of Asia became a recurring motif across centuries of European thought, showing up in the “seigneurial monarchy” of Bodin, the “oriental despotism” of Enlightenment thinkers such as Boulanger, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Condorcet, the “theocratic despotism” of Hegel, the “Asiatic mode of production” of Marx, and the “patrimonialism” and “sultanism” of Weber.3 1 Jack Fairey and Brian P. Farrell Such assumptions about “Asiatic despotism” used to be seen as self- evident given not only that Asia was home to many of the largest and most populous empires from the Mongols to Qing China, but also that, in purely numerical terms, the majority of imperial states have been based in the central and eastern regions of the Eurasian supercontinent. The relatively brief epoch of Western global supremacy during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had the effect of turning this paradigm on its head so completely that empire and imperialism are now conceived of and studied as largely European— or, at least, trans- Atlantic— phenomena. Modern theorizing about the nature and practice of empire has thus, until quite recently, been done primarily on the basis of evidence derived from the modern British, Spanish, and French empires, with supporting evidence drawn from their Russian, Dutch, German, and Habsburg contemporaries. Asia was thus demoted, somewhat ironically, from the Urheimat of empire to one of its principal victims. This series will revisit the relationships between empire and Asia by asking questions about the historical experiences of empire in Asia. Those questions emanate from, and revolve around, three principal queries. First, how did empire, as a form of political organization, shape the spatial, cultural, economic, and especially political ordering of Asia and Asians? Second, what concepts, practices, and understandings of empire defi ned these Asian experiences? Finally, how did both these things connect Asia and Asians to wider worlds— and to what ends? In order to answer these questions about the experience, impact, and importance of empire in Asia, however, we need to vault beyond old false binaries of “East and West” or “Europe and Asia.” The fi rst volume of this series will examine how empire fi rst shaped a larger Eurasia— a supercontinent intimately connected, across time, by geography and the movements of peoples, goods, and ideas— while the second volume will show how empire helped forge what we will call a “Global Asia” (a concept we will unpack in the introduction to that second volume). Concepts and Historiography We propose to conduct this examination by providing a general and comparative history of empire as a form of governance in Asia, across the span of time during which modern Eurasia, then Global Asia, evolved as geopolitical realities. The value of such a project stands on the premise that empire played a decisive role in shaping the histories of modern Asia: if so, then a clearer understanding of the histories of empire in Asia must surely strengthen our general understanding of modern Asia.

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