Foreword

Summary

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 long-time 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. While engaging with Aaron Friedberg's thesis which held that Asia is “ripe for rivalry,” he has also been questioning why there is an absence of non-Western international relations theory. Debates with scholars such as David Kang on the nature of Asian international relation through time, have seen Acharya, among others, exploring how we might portray the interstate and inter-cultural relations of Asia, past and present. 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.”