Recognition and the origins of international society

Erik Ringmar*

Department of Political Science, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

The international system of civilized states that came to develop in Europe in thecourse of the nineteenth century was formed through practices of recognition, whichcreated and affirmed similarities between all European states, but also through prac-tices of non-recognition, which created and affirmed differences between Europeansand non-Europeans. Practices of non-recognition are generally ignored in liberalaccounts of the origins of international society. A theory of recognition allows us toretrieve this alternative history and make it explicit.

Keywords: recognition; non-recognition; international systems; international law;international practices; English School

In his account of the logic of world history in the Phenomenology of Spirit, G.W.F. Hegelenvisioned two parties locked into a deadly struggle for recognition.1 ‘They must engagein this struggle,’ Hegel explained, ‘for they must raise their certainty of being forthemselves to truth, both in the case of the other and in their own case’ (Hegel 1979,sec. 187:113–114). There was at the time of Hegel’s writing a real-life example of such adeadly struggle – the slave rebellion on the Caribbean island of Saint-Domingue, andthere are good reasons to believe that this event directly inspired Hegel’s philosophicalaccount. ‘The actual and successful revolution of Caribbean slaves against their masters isthe moment when the dialectical logic of recognition becomes visible as the thematics ofworld history, the story of the universal realization of freedom’ (Buck-Morss 2009,59–60). In fact, there were two separate struggles of recognition going on in Saint-Domingue. First, the slaves struggled to be recognized by their former masters, butsecondly, the new nation of Haiti struggled to gain international recognition as anindependent state. Recognition, we could argue, was always a matter of internationalpolitics, and it was always a matter of non-European nations gaining recognition fromEuropean.2

As Hegel explained, a failure to be recognized on one’s own preferred terms was not theend of the story. Instead, it was only the beginning. A failure of recognition initiated aprocess of progressive change whereby the inferior party – the slave, the non-European –was forced to work on himself, to improve himself, to the point where the superior party –the master, the European – finally would be able to recognize him as one of his own (Kojève1980, 31–70; Horkheimer and Adorno 2007, 3–42). This dialectical process of acculturationdescribes the very logic of world history, and its final end is a steady state in which fullrecognition is universally extended, on equal terms, by everyone to everyone else.

Or, to translate the same logic into terms valid within the international politics of thenineteenth century: there was an international society made up of civilized European

*Email: erik@ringmar.net

Global Discourse, 2014http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23269995.2014.917031

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states, considered as sovereign actors who all granted each other formal recognition asequals. International society was kept together through what we could call ‘practices ofrecognition’ – everyday forms of behavior into which the recognition which states grantedeach other was embedded. Non-European states, on the other hand, were not members ofinternational society; they had at best a partial standing in international politics, and theydid not enjoy full rights to sovereignty. But just as Hegel had explained, this was not theend of the story. The non-Europeans could be recognized as full members if they onlyworked on themselves, improved themselves, that is, became sufficiently Europe-like.Having busied themselves at this task through internal reforms and diplomatic measures,Turkey was formally invited to become a member of Europe-led international society in1856 and Japan in 1899.

The logic which Hegel elucidates is not, however, the only one possible. The processof acculturation does not necessarily work. There is no reason, for example, why thealready established members of international society cannot refuse to admit non-members,no matter what they do to improve themselves. It is through exclusion, after all, that theexclusivity of a membership club is best maintained. As Groucho Marx famously noted,once everyone is admitted on equal terms, membership loses its social prestige (Marx1995, 321). In this alternative scenario, recognition takes place not between a master and aslave, but between a group of masters who provide an identity for themselves byexaggerating the features that separate, and thereby distinguish, them from others.3

They recognize each other as superior because of their differences from everyone else.This, we will argue, is how international society came to be constituted. International

society was not formed once a core of like-minded European states realized how muchthey had in common and as they generously extended the benefits of their solutions toeveryone else. This is how members of the English School have explained the origins ofinternational society, and this explanation is incorrect (Bull and Watson 1985; Watson2009, 288–298). Rather, international society was formed as the Europeans drew as sharpa distinction as ever possible between themselves and others, accentuating and exaggerat-ing the differences and forgetting nuances and variations. This demarcation, moreover,constituted the rationale for two entirely different sets of behaviors: practices of mutualrecognition among the Europeans themselves, but practices of non-recognition in relationto non-Europeans. It was through practices of recognition, affirming sameness, andthrough practices of non-recognition, affirming difference, that international societycame to constitute itself as such. And the story is, arguably, on-going. Practices of non-recognition are constitutive of international society also as it currently exists.

The aim of this article is to briefly review these two sets of practices – practices ofrecognition and of non-recognition – as they developed within three separate fields –diplomacy, trade, and warfare – and to study how the respective practices gave rise to thedistinction between the European and the non-European through which internationalsociety was constituted. As an illustration of this process of identity-creation, we brieflylook at the legal stipulations that emerged among international lawyers in the course of thenineteenth century regarding the protection of cultural artifacts in times of war.

Practices of recognition

International relations in Europe are often thought of as simultaneously both anarchicaland societal in nature (Bull 1977, 23–52). That is, despite persistent wars and threats ofwar, relations between states are not best described in terms of a Hobbesian state ofnature. In their everyday practices, states follow norms and customs which help determine

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the way they participate in balance of power politics, alliances and international organiza-tions, as well as the way they conduct their trade, diplomacy, and wars. Althoughatrocious counter-examples are easy to cite, international society does contribute ameasure of order, a degree of civilized behavior, and it assures a modicum of predict-ability and peace to relations between states. Since these everyday practices presupposethat we recognize the other participants as formally equal to ourselves, we could call them‘practices of recognition.’

Practices of recognition presuppose reciprocity. By engaging in a certain practice, weexpect our counterparts to respond in kind: to mirror our behavior and to return favors, ifnot in every interaction, at least over the longer haul (Keohane 1986, 19–24). Althoughthe rules of the game may be largely tacit, states know how to go on behaving towardseach other, and they all go on behaving much in the same way. This knowing-how-to-go-on is founded not only on formal similarities between us but on the fact that we share in acertain way of life. As a party to these practices, we can expect all other parties toautomatically recognize us as one of their own; non-parties, however, can make no suchassumptions. ‘It is scarcely necessary to point out,’ the British lawyer William E. Hallpointed out in 1884,

that as international law is a product of the special civilisation of modern Europe, and forms ahighly artificial system of which the principles cannot be supposed to be understood orrecognised by countries differently civilised, such states only can be presumed to be subjectto it as are inheritors of that civilisation. (Hall 1884, 40)

This does not preclude disagreements between members of the same international societyand it does not rule out that violence will be used, but it does make wars betweenmembers of the same international society into fratricides or into peculiarly internationalspecies of civil wars.

Compare the new science of international, positive, law as it came to develop in thecourse of the nineteenth century (Koskenniemi 2004, 11–97). According to its enthusiasticproponents, international law is not declared into existence by political fiat but emergesinstead from the everyday practices in which states engage (Bull 1977, 59–71).International law is customary law, case-law, which resembles the law of statelesssocieties, in that it is constructed from the bottom up rather than the top down. Ubisocietas ibi ius est, as John Westlake, the British international lawyer, put it in 1894,‘where there is a society there is law’ (Westlake 1894, 3). ‘When we assert that there issuch a thing as international law, we assert that there is a society of states: when werecognise that there is a society of states, we recognise that there is international law.’ Yetsince customary law can only be as strong as the customs on which it rests, internationallaw will inevitably fall apart if international society is too diverse and the practices inwhich states engage too divergent. To make international society more coherent and moreunified, according to the new generation of international lawyers, was consequently thebest way to strengthen the force and increase the reach of the law. The more unified andhomogeneous international society became, the more viable the law, and the more viablethe law, the more unified and homogeneous international society (Lorimer 1884,2:112–113).

The practices of diplomacy provide an example. In Europe, the first permanentambassadors were dispatched from the court one of ruler to the court of another in thecourse of the Renaissance (Mattingly 1937, 423–439, 1988, 61–77). Despite mutualsuspicions and recurring hostilities, this expanding diplomatic network provided a

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means of gathering information, of spying, but also a way of keeping in touch withone another, of carrying out negotiations and concluding deals. A number of practicesdeveloped, which facilitated the work of the new diplomats: extraterritoriality for theirembassies, immunity for the diplomats themselves, inviolability of diplomatic dis-patches, the right to worship the god of their choice, and so on. Or consider the manyrituals in which the diplomats engaged. There were rules for how they should carrythemselves, for how they should dress, walk, and talk; there were prescriptions forhow to arrange audiences, dinners; for which presents to bring on what occasions; andfor how letters of accreditation should be written, presented, and acknowledged(Satow 1917). A large number of rules concerned how to determine matters of rankand standing: the way diplomats should be seated during negotiations, in conferencesand at dinner tables; who had the right to enter a gate before whom; and the order inwhich treaties should be signed and ratified.

An analogous argument can be made regarding international trade. In early modernEurope, with Holland and then Britain taking the lead, new markets were discoveredand new products – Atlantic herring, Baltic wheat, West-Indian sugar – developed andpromoted (see, inter alia, Braudel 2002a, 81–114, 138–204; De Vries and van derWoude 1997, 350–408). The vast profits made in these markets were fed back intoexpanding commercial enterprises and a large number of practices developed, whichorganized, facilitated, and policed the new trade. Commerce required ships and theships required harbors, shipwrights, sea-captains, and crews, but also pilots, bettermaps, and more reliable commercial intelligence. The goods needed to be safelytransported, insured against storms and pirates, stored in granaries and warehouses,then distributed. Financial instruments, such as bills of exchange, were required to payfor the purchases, and the financial instruments needed banks that were connected toeach other in an all-European network. In addition, once each respective state gotinvolved in the commercial transactions, an entirely new set of political practicesdeveloped concerned with ways of organizing tolls and duties, ways of avoiding tollsand duties, ways of smuggling and preventing smuggling, with patents and mono-polies, with the collection of taxes, and with ways of giving and receiving bribes. Orconsider a practice such as the granting of ‘most favored nation’ status, wherebycountries promised each other not to treat each other less advantageously than theirbest-treated trading partner.

The practices of diplomacy and trade embodied a shared set of values whichgoverned relations within the European international system. The principal suchvalue was sovereignty (Bull 1977, 8–9, 36–37; Koskenniemi 2004, 143–152). InEurope, each state was regarded as a sovereign subject that followed its own preferredcourse of action. The goal of diplomacy was to further each state’s national interest,and the purpose of trade was to enrich the nation. European states had, for example,an obvious right to control which goods that moved across their borders, or,indeed, if any goods moved across their borders at all (Heffter 1857, 67–68; Hont2010, 185–266). Sovereignty and formal equality led to the problem of anarchy – tothe problem of how to assure peace in the absence of a world state. However, at leastas strong as these centrifugal tendencies was the centripetal pressure for social con-formity. Consider the practices of diplomacy. European diplomats showed up in thesame place at the same time, following the same elaborate protocol, wearing the samekinds of clothes and powdered wigs. Through practices such as these, the Europeanstates recognized each other as sovereign, as formally equal, and also and at the sametime, as rivals and enemies.

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Practices of non-recognition

International society thus described was sharply distinguished from the assorted politicalentities which the Europeans encountered once they left their own continent. In thenineteenth century, it was common to make a distinction between two kinds of non-Europeans: ‘savages’ and ‘barbarians.’ ‘Savages’ were peoples, predominantly in Africaand the Americas, who lived in societies that had no state. Roaming around in vast forests,they could not properly defend themselves from outsiders and they had no means ofcontrolling and administering their own territories (Lorimer 1884, 2:2:157; Westlake1894, 136). ‘Barbarians,’ on the other hand, were predominantly to be found in theancient monarchies of Asia. Here there were states – states which more than perfectlyfulfilled the European requirements for statehood – yet since they were states of adistinctly non-European kind, it was impossible to include them in Europe’s internationalsociety. The problem was their unwillingness, or perhaps inability, to reciprocate. Asianstates were ‘despotic,’ the Europeans decided, meaning that they were arbitrarily ruled byomnipotent rulers who cared little for the welfare of the people (Rubiés 2005, 109–180).Taking themselves as the centers of their respective worlds, they refused to regard otherstates as equals. With states such as these, there could be no mirroring and no trust.

As a result of the drawing of these distinctions, savages and barbarians were given anentirely different standing in international law than European states (Lorimer 1884, 2:101;Wheaton 1855, 27–82; Bluntschli 1874, 61–109). European states enjoyed the full rightsand obligations of sovereignty – the inviolability of borders and the right to self-determi-nation. A civilized state could conduct both domestic and foreign policy without inter-ference from others, and if it was attacked, it had an unquestionable right to self-defense.Savages, by contrast, had no standing in international law; they enjoyed no sovereignrights and could rely only on the kind of benevolence which all human beings owe eachother by virtue of their shared humanity. ‘The right of undeveloped races, like the right ofundeveloped individuals,’ said James Lorimer, professor of public law at the University ofEdinburgh, 1884, ‘is a right not to recognition as what they are not, but to guardianshipthat is, to guidance in becoming that of which they are capable, in realising their specialideals’ (Lorimer 1884, 2:157). As a consequence, there was nothing stopping theEuropeans from appropriating their land for themselves. As for barbarians, they occupiedan intermediary position between the civilized and the barbarians (Lorimer 1884, 2:216–218; Westlake 1894, 142; Oppenheim 1912, vol. I:155). They had an international statusand standing, but they were international subjects only in certain respects. Barbarian stateswere formally independent but not fully sovereign, and they periodically saw theirterritories invaded and parts of their political systems taken over by foreigners. Theiractions were often constrained by unequal treaties and by military intimidation.

The practices of diplomacy were altered in line with these distinctions. As for thesavages, it was obviously quite impossible to establish proper diplomatic relations withpeople who did not have a state of their own, and besides, Europeans were convinced,savages were far too uncouth to master the elaborate protocol required (Westlake 1894,129–189; Anghie 1999, 1–80). The diplomatic engagements that did take place with suchpeoples were farcical exchanges where the natives dressed up in what they took to be therequired outfits, while the European visitors struggled to repress their laughter. Diplomaticrelations with the monarchies of Asia was quite a different matter. These states had longtraditions of receiving foreign diplomats, not least from Europe, and medieval Europeanvisitors had often been amazed at the sumptuousness of the courts and the dignity of therituals involved. Yet once the Euro-centric international society came to constitute itself as

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such, these traditional practices were found wanting. A particular problem was the head-long prostration, the proskynesis or koutou, which Asian rulers insisted that visitorsperform (Rockhill 1897, 627–643; Ringmar 2012, 68–80). The prostration, theEuropeans decided, constituted proof of Asian despotism since only Asian monarchsrequired such ceremonies and only Asian subjects were servile enough to performthem. The insistence that European visitors participate in the same ritual demonstratedhow difficult it was to do business with Asiatic rulers. A European diplomat whoprostrated himself before an Asian king would not only degrade himself but also hiscountry. While European visitors in previous ages had followed the local customs whenvisiting Asia, by the nineteenth century they stubbornly refused to humiliate themselves inthis manner.

Trade provides another example of practices of non-recognition. Trade with savageswas easy to conduct. Since savages had no state they had no way of policing their ownborders and no way of stopping the Europeans from engaging in whichever exchanges forwhich they could find a business partner. In Africa, for example, the Europeans boughtivory, hardwoods, and slaves in exchange for shotguns, mirrors, and alcohol (Braudel2002b, 430–441). As for the barbarian states of Asia, they did indeed have the power tostop European attempts to trade, and in the case of China and Japan, they famously did. InChina, before 1842, foreign trade was only allowed at the southern port of Guangzhou,and in Japan, before 1869, trade was only possible at Deshima in Kyushu. Yet since thesebarbarian kingdoms were not full members of international society, the Europeans saw noreason to respect these constraining arrangements. In 1853, Japan was threatened by theBlack Ships of Commodore Perry, and between 1839–42 and 1856–60, the Europeansmade war on the Chinese in order to gain trading rights, in particular the right to sellopium. In Europe, needless to say, similar practices would have been perfectlyunthinkable.

The arguments used to justify Europe’s military aggression throw further light onthe distinction which international lawyers made between the civilized and the unciv-ilized. According to the medieval understanding, based on the stipulations of naturallaw, the right to trade was given equally to all men by Providence itself (Viner 1976,32–33, 37). Providence has so wisely organized matters, went the argument, that theobjects which human beings require are scattered around the globe. We must conse-quently exchange with one another if we are to provision for ourselves, and in theprocess, friendly relations between individuals and societies will quite naturally cometo develop. It is consequently against the stipulations of natural law to restrict trade, inparticular in the kinds of goods that are necessary for our survival. This, indeed, wasthe premise of Hugo Grotius’ celebrated argument in favor of freedom of the seas(Grotius 1916). Yet in the nineteenth century, this argument was discarded togetherwill all other parts of the natural law heritage, and the cunning of Providence wasreplaced by appeals to economic advantage. Free trade, Adam Smith explained, isbeneficial to all parties, yet among civilized states, trade was never freer than thenational imperatives permitted. Sovereign states could, and did, restrict trade in orderto benefit themselves. It was only in relation to people outside of Europe that the oldnatural law arguments remained in force. As the Dictionary of Commerce, 1842,explained: if a country abundant in resources ‘insulates itself by its institutions, andadopts a system of policy that is plainly inconsistent with the interests of every othernation,’ then ‘such nation may be justly compelled to adopt a course of policy moreconsistent with the general well-being of mankind’ (McCulloch 1842, 72). Sincearguments regarding economic advantage carried no force with barbarians, and since

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the laws of Euro-centric international society did not apply to them, natural law wasused to ‘justly compel’ them.

In the Euro-centric international system, we said, practices of recognition createsimilarities between the states that participate in them by embedding presumptionsregarding formal equality into the very structure of interaction. In relation to non-Europeans, on the other hand, practices of non-recognition create differences betweenstates by embedding presumptions regarding inequality into the structure of interaction(Anghie 1999, 1–80). First, the Europeans drew as sharp a distinction as ever possiblebetween themselves and everyone else, accentuating and exaggerating the differences andforgetting nuances and variations, and then, when acting in terms of the distinction thusdrawn, the differences which the Europeans had invented were made manifest andobvious for everyone to see. As a result, all Europeans really were alike, and they weredistinctly different from non-Europeans. It was the invention of the categories of ‘barbar-ians’ and ‘savages’ which made civilization possible.

A short case-study: the protection of cultural artifacts

As a way to study the practices through which recognition was granted and withheld,consider a short case study regarding the protection of cultural artifacts during times ofwar. Cultural artifacts are not resources that can be used for the purposes of warfare,instead they are prizes which a victor brings home in triumph, demonstrating that he isstrong enough to take what the vanquished opponent cannot protect. Alternatively, theyare things which the victor deliberately choses to respect, thus displaying his respect notonly for the objects concerned but also for the opponent . As such, the cultural artifact,and its degree of protection in times of war, provides a way to understand the nature of therelations that obtain between the participants in a war.

Before the nineteenth century, international law had little to say about the protection ofmuseums, libraries, and art collections (Auzillion 1897; Ringmar 2013b, 265–267).Occupying armies would deal with such artifacts in whatever way they saw fit, andthere were no legal prohibitions against looting and pillaging. However, once the scienceof positive international law came to be established in the course of the nineteenth century,destruction and appropriation of cultural artifacts came to be explicitly banned by inter-national treaties and surprisingly often also honored in the practices in which Europeanstates engaged.

A first requirement of the new laws was that wars can only be fought betweensoldiers, not against civilians and that only military targets legitimately can be attacked.This stipulation had implications for cultural artifacts, since all privately held property wasregarded as off limits to an occupying army. The occupiers could certainly provision forthemselves in enemy territory, set up camp, and requisition horses and vehicles, but whenthey did so they had to pay a fair price for what they took (Bluntschli 1874, §§653–657,366–69). A different set of provisions governed the property of the enemy state. Althoughall public property automatically fell into the hands of an occupying army, there werelimitations here too. Cultural artifacts which rightly belonged to the people, but of whichthe state was the custodian, could not be appropriated. The destruction of archives andlibraries was not permitted since that disproportionately would disadvantage civilians. Theonly exceptions both in the case of private and public property concerned ‘militarynecessity’ – but any military benefit must be immediate, overwhelming, and easilydemonstrable (Lieber 1863, §14, 4; Bluntschli 1874, §549, 309; Wheaton 1855, §6,421; Moore 1906, 178). Cultural artifacts were unlikely to fall into this category.

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Unrealistic though these requirements may appear, they reflected the way armiesalready for some time had conducted themselves on the battlefields of Europe (Ringmar2013b, 265–267). During the Napoleonic Wars, the British had paid for the provisionsthey requisitioned, and they did the same during the Crimean War. Pillaging and lootingwere punished in all armies, and the cultural and architectural treasures of enemies weregenerally respected. The near universal cries of ‘barbarism’ which the exceptions to theserules evoked demonstrate the relevance of the new practices. Napoleon, for example,looted art collections in Italy, but after Waterloo, most of the objects were returned andeven the French admitted that the actions had constituted war crimes. Similarly, publicopinion was outraged when British troops in 1814 burned down government buildings inWashington, DC, including the White House (Moore 1906, 200). Later in the century,these new practices of warfare were increasingly codified. The ‘Lieber Code’ of 1863,which provided rules of engagement for the soldiers of the Northern states in theAmerican Civil War, is an early celebrated example, but the British, German, andFrench armies soon adopted similar legally inspired regulations (Lieber 1863; Ringmar2009, 52–60).

However, when it comes to wars conducted in non-European settings, an entirelydifferent set of rules applied (Colby 1927, 279–288; Ringmar 2013b, 267–270). Thepractices developed here recognized the differences between Europeans and non-Europeans, not their similarities. In these colonial wars, works of art and buildings ofreligious and architectural importance were not only not protected but often explicitlysingled out as targets. The destruction of cultural artifacts came to be identified as anintegral part of colonial warfare and as a particularly efficient way of striking at intractablenatives. The wars fought by France in Algeria in the 1830s and 40s, by Britain inAfghanistan, 1841–42, and in India after the Uprising in 1857 provide numerous exam-ples. In all three locations, the Europeans met with fierce resistance from the locals, and ineach case they came close to being defeated. Changing from European-style, civilized,practices of warfare to uncivilized practices, their fortunes eventually turned. In Algeria,civilians were explicitly targeted and the bases of their livelihoods – herds, fields,orchards – were destroyed (Porch 1986, 376–407). After the British had lost an entirearmy in Afghanistan in the winter of 1842 and been forced into a humiliating retreat, theyreturned in the fall of the same year to get revenge. Here too civilians were targeted andthe Grand Bazaar of Kabul was reduced to pebbles (Kaye 1851, 638–639). In India, afterthe British had retaken Delhi, the city was subject to a spectacular loot in which privateand public property alike was stolen and wantonly destroyed. Particularly notorious wasthe practice of strapping rebels to the mouths of cannons and firing them off to eternity(Davis 1994, 293–317; Craig 1858, 348–350).

Another spectacular case of destruction took place northwest of Beijing in October1860 (Ringmar 2013a, esp. 69–85; Ringmar 2011, 273–297). It was here, atYuanmingyuan, that the emperor of China had his residence, an enormous park filledwith palaces, pagodas, temples, galleries, and archives. The buildings representedarchitecture drawn from various parts of China and beyond, and the collections includedjewelry, clocks, mechanical dolls, furniture, silks, paintings, calligraphy, and a librarywith a copy of every book printed in the Chinese language. It was one of the mostremarkable collections of cultural artifacts ever assembled. Yet between October 6 and9, 1860, Yuanmingyuan was thoroughly looted by a French army, and on October 18and 19, the whole compound was burned to the ground by the British. As even some ofthe participants themselves admitted, this was a ‘Vandal-like’ and a ‘barbaric’ act (Hake1884, 33).

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The question is what the relationship might be between the way the Europeansbehaved in these two geographical settings. Why did the Europeans agree to protectcultural artifacts in Europe itself while they at the very same time targeted them, in non-European settings, as a matter of explicit and officially sanctioned policy? The mostcharitable interpretation is to say that the discrepancy was nothing but a coincidence, butwe may be more inclined to see it as a particularly blatant case of double-standards. In factit was neither. Instead the two sets of behaviors causally entailed one another. The twodistinct sets of practices first created and then affirmed the differences between theEuropean and the non-European, constituting the identity of a European self as well asa non-European other. It was because the Europeans committed acts of barbarism outsideof Europe that they became increasingly civilized in Europe itself, and because theybecame increasingly civilized in Europe itself, that they committed acts of barbarismoutside of Europe. Through the practices of recognition embedded in war-making,Europeans were made alike, and through the practices of non-recognition, non-Europeans were made different. It was on the bases of these similarities, and thesedifferences, that international society rested.

This categorization explains why the Europeans fought the non-Europeans in suchferocious fashion. Although the destruction of a cultural artifact had no military value, itwas an efficient way of demonstrating one’s might and of intimidating one’s enemies.Such demonstrative effects were particularly important when it came to colonial warfare(Ringmar 2013a, 147–149). Despite their obvious military superiority, the Europeans werenot generally able to impose their will on the kingdoms of Asia by regular military meansalone. Wars were logistical nightmares at a time when a single journey to East Asia tookthree months to complete and instructions took just as long to reach a commander in thefield. A country such as China was impossible to occupy and administer, and althoughIndia was colonized, the British military presence here was exceedingly thin on theground, a weakness exposed during the uprising of 1857. Under such circumstances,the most successful military actions were those that terrified the locals. Colonial warswere pieces of theater designed to showcase a military superiority which did not necessa-rily exist (Ringmar 2013a, 147–149). This is why cultural artifacts were targeted. It wasbecause the palaces, temples, and bazaars contained such irreplaceable treasures that theywere destroyed. This, the Europeans decided, was the quickest way to intimidate theiruncivilized enemies (Porch 1986, 378–382). In addition, the radical distinction betweenpractices of recognition and of non-recognition served to remind the Europeans of whothey took themselves to be. Spectacular acts of destruction undertaken in extra-Europeansettings were a way of policing the boundary they had drawn between the civilized selfand the uncivilized other. Treating non-Europeans differently, and making war on them inexplicitly uncivilized ways, strengthened and affirmed this distinction. In this way, thecoherence of European international society was enhanced.

On the origins of international society

According to a reformist narrative common to American liberals and to members of theEnglish School, international society has its origin in the shared practices, which devel-oped among European states in fields such as diplomacy, trade, and warfare. We calledthese ‘practices of recognition’ since they embedded norms of formal equality andreciprocity in everyday, routinized, behavior. International society became global inscope as the Europeans, in the nineteenth century, colonized the rest of the world andas the former colonies, in the twentieth century, achieved their independence on European

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terms. As a result, in 1945, all states were recognized as sovereign and as formally equal,as subjects of international law, and as members of the United Nations. In the twenty-firstcentury, on the received account, this international society still helps bring a measure ofpredictability and order to relations between states (Bull and Watson 1985; Watson 2009,288–298).

Common though this narrative may be, it rests on a fatal omission. Internationalsociety, we argued, was not formed once a core of like-minded European states realizedhow much they had in common and as they generously extended the benefits of theirsolutions to everyone else. Rather, international society was formed as the Europeansdrew as sharp a distinction as ever possible between themselves and everyone else. TheEuropeans were ‘civilized,’ they agreed, and the non-Europeans were either ‘savages’ or‘barbarians.’ This distinction did not name a preexisting difference as much as it con-stituted a difference which previously did not exist. This difference, moreover, constituteda rationale for practices of non-recognition – forms of behavior through which presump-tions regarding inequality came to be routinized in everyday interactions – whichexcluded the non-Europeans and made them legitimate targets for European interventionsand wars. The practices of non-recognition were not an aberration, not a mistake, and noteven a regrettable by-product of imperialism. Instead they were constitutive of interna-tional society as it currently exists.

Much as Hegel suggested in the Phenomenology, the only way for the non-Europeans toavoid this predicament was to emulate the European understanding of international politicsand to quickly become Europe-like countries. They had to work on themselves, improvethemselves, before they could gain membership in international society. On 30March 1856,in the wake of the Crimean War, Turkey was expressly ‘admitted to participate in theadvantages of the public law and system of concert of Europe,’ but critics soon complainedthat the admission had been premature since Turkey’s laws still were distinctly uncivilized(Moore 1906, vol. I:9; Krauel 1877, 388). ‘The Turks, as a race,’ James Lorimer decided,‘are probably incapable of the political development, which would render their adoption ofconstitutional government possible.’ Islam is an ‘exclusive religion’ which stands betweenTurkey and the world and contradicts ‘its constitutional professions of reciprocating will’(Lorimer 1884, vol. 2:123). Compare the discussions which today are pursued regarding aTurkish application for membership in the European Union (Nas and Özer 2012). Afterdecades of attempts to approach the Europeans, Turkey was finally admitted as an officialcandidate country in December 1999, but negotiations have since stalled and leadingEuropean politicians have insisted that the country cannot be admitted since ‘Turkey isnot a proper European country’ (Bilefsky 2007; Finkel 2012).

Or take the case of Japan. After very extensive domestic reforms in the 1870s and 80sand full acceptance of the Euro-centric rules on diplomacy and international law, thecountry was finally admitted into the ‘circle of law-governed countries’ ‘as a fullyindependent sovereign power’ in the summer of 1899 (Moore 1906, vol. I:9; vonSiebold 1901). And although the Japanese leaders played along with the Europe-directedbalance of power politics during the First World War, they began to break the rules in the1930s. Japan, it turned out, was a revisionist power and not a very civilized country at all.As far as China was concerned, the imperial authorities undertook sweeping reforms of itsforeign policy in the 1860s, including the establishment of a European-style ministry offoreign affairs – the Chinese began sending diplomats abroad in the 1870s, and partici-pated in international conferences in the 1890s – and yet the Europeans remainedprofoundly skeptical regarding the country’s progress. China’s reforms never seemed tobe radical enough. In 1912, according to Lassa Oppenheim, China still belonged to a

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small group of countries where ‘neither their governments nor their populations are atpresent able to fully understand the Law of Nations and to take up an attitude which is inconformity with all the rules of this law’ (Oppenheim 1912, vol. I:155).

Lets note the paradoxical nature of this game of recognition and non-recognition(Ringmar 2002, 115–136). To the extent that countries such as Turkey, Japan, and Chinaignored the rules of the Euro-centric international system, they were denied the rights ofsovereignty and they could be bullied by the Europeans with impunity. It was conse-quently only by following Europeans practices that they could gain the right to act freely;only by modeling themselves on foreigners would they be allowed to be themselves.Sovereignty, once gained, would give them the right to do whatever they wanted, butsovereignty could only be granted to states that lived up to the European norm. Self-determination, much as in Hegel’s formulation of the struggle for recognition in thePhenomenology, required determination by others.

The paradox of sovereignty placed, and continues to place, European and non-European states on an unequal footing despite all the rhetoric regarding equality anduniversal rights. Today, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, all states are con-sidered sovereign, they have their respective seats in the United Nations, and they are allformally equal subjects of international law, trade, warfare, and diplomacy. Yet thecivilized states of the world still need savages and barbarians who can help confirmthem in their perceptions of themselves. Although there are few remaining formal criteriaby which such distinctions can be drawn, there are a number of informal practices –informal practices of non-recognition – that serve the same purposes. Countries are stillcalled uncivilized by European and North American TV viewers watching reports ofbloody wars in faraway places, by investment bankers drawing up plans in their air-conditioned offices, by development experts frustrated by the inefficiencies of the localgovernment, and by expats as they look out on shantytowns from their chauffeur-drivensedans. Or consider the discourse on human rights (Mutua 2001, 201–245). Despite thenorm regarding sovereignty, to which all independent countries are subject, sovereignty,the Europeans insist, should not give rulers a pretext for treating their own people indegrading, dehumanizing, and savage ways. And while there is no doubt that humanrights continue to be broken in various non-European locations around the world, and thatsuch abuses should be condemned and stopped, it is equally obvious that the human rightsdiscourse serves Europeans well in drawing the same line they have drawn since thenineteenth century – the line between themselves as civilized and the non-Europeans assavages and barbarians.

Notes1. I am grateful to Jens Bartelson, Shannon Brincat, and John Hobson for comments on a previous

version of this article.2. ‘Europeans’ here, and throughout this article, includes the inhabitants of the former European

colonies in North America.3. This possibility was always occluded by Hegel’s own account where there were only two

parties to the interaction.

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