WHO: Wiebke Denecke (MIT), Kimiko Kōno (Waseda University), Johann Noh (MIT/Korea University), Kyungho Sim (Korea University), Wonseok Yang (Korea University)
WHAT: The Challenge
Today’s hegemonic system of global diplomacy is rooted in the Treaty of Westphalia, the peace treaty that ended the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648). In the Westphalian system the sovereignty of states and the balance of powers are key concepts that still underpin today’s international law and diploatic practice.
In contrast, large tribute-system-based empires like China often relied on social rituals and political symbolism that projected strict hierarchies onto the diplomatic communication with their neighbors. Older forms of this “mission diplomacy,” “friendship diplomacy,” often derogatively called “goodwill missions,” required the laborious and costly preparation of lavish, often even dangerous tribute missions, typically accompanied by dozens of envoys—top experts of not just politics, but also poetry, music, medicine, philosophy and more—accompanied by hundreds of sailors. Although considered less “modern” and advanced than the Westphalian system, we find that the intense human interaction, on intellectual, literary, and cognitive levels, brought a depth to diplomatic relations that any contractual practice of diplomacy lacks. A case in point is the 2017 registration of Documents on Joseon Tongsinsa/Chosen Tsushinshi : The History of Peace Building and Cultural Exchanges between Korea and Japan from the 17th to 19th Century as United Nations’ Memory of the World. The official nomination form even claims that the “goodwill missions” system led to an unprecedented three-hundred year-long peace between Japan and Korea from the 17th to the 19th centuries.
WHY: Motivations & Intentions
In this project we study three millennia of diplomatic statecraft in East Asia to uncover patterns of diplomatic success and failure and discover strategies that might benefit today’s world, where respect for and investment in diplomacy is in decline. In East Asia’s Sino-centric world, diplomacy was conducted primarily through the written word: in short, satisfying the needs of China’s tribute diplomacy required peripheral states to acquire literacy and build centralized bureaucracies that required high levels of literacy and specialized political, cosmological, scientific, ritual, musical, and literary knowledge. Our deeper goal is to explore the characteristics and significance of diplomacy in the Sinitic tribute sphere and to ask: what higher wisdom and effective strategies can we learn from three millennia of diplomatic interaction and state-building in East Asia, in and for the current period of diplomatic crisis and the failure of “soft” forms of diplomacy on the world stage?
HOW CAN I JOIN? Activities & Events in 2025
- Two International workshops held at Waseda University (Tokyo) and Korea University (Seoul)
- Two edited volumes entitled Three Millennia of Diplomatic Craft in East Asia: Perspectives for Today’s Global Order and Human Flourishing (planned for winter 2025 and summer 2026)
For further details, contact the project leaders.