A dynamic and interactionist multiplex order existed in the classical eastern Indian Ocean corresponding with modern Southeast Asia (~1st—15th centuries CE). This regional order was not the product of superior Chinese imperial/material power, or some essentialist version of the tributary system. Nor did Indic ideas spread “naturally” into an ideational vacuum in Southeast Asia. This order was in fact an outcome of Southeast Asia’s active agency in fostering connectivity with Chinese and Indian polities, and the consequent material and ideational interactions that ensued. The multiplex order in the eastern Indian Ocean was a highly robust and resilient order that lasted for centuries even in the absence of a grand design. It did not depend exclusively on any single polity, not even imperial China. Although the rise and fall of Chinese empires may have changed the modes of interaction with China (at the Chinese end of the system), the maritime interactions across this vast space continued. As one local mandala (Southeast Asian polity) disappeared, another assumed its nodal position in this interactive and interconnected world.[i]
Excerpted from Divergent Worlds by Amitav Acharya & Manjeet S Pardesi. Reprinted with permission from Yale University Press.
It was the underlying ideational factors that made this order sticky and long-lasting. According to Hedley Bull, all international orders have a purpose or goals that sustain the pattern of interactions. A shared normative understanding of order had historically emerged in the classical eastern Indian Ocean that was supportive of the twin goals of making the trading system run while maintaining distinct politico-cultural identities. These norms were embedded in both—the ways in which the mandala states sought to manage their politico-military and politico-economic relations, and the rules that governed their trade and cultural intercourse.
Furthermore, while wars were hardly absent in the classical eastern Indian Ocean, they were not system-destroying. The very nature of the mandala polities put limits on warfare, and bureaucratic and territorial incorporation of the defeated polity was not the dominant practice. Although motivated by entirely different interests and ideologies, even the large-scale naval expeditions by imperial Chinese polities and the Cholas did not destroy the system, although they did change the fate of some mandalas. While inter-mandala warfare and the Chinese/Chola expeditions were governed by different logics, their combined effect was to ensure the twin systemic goals of continued maritime trade and the maintenance of the distinct politico-cultural identities of the regional polities, thus ensuring what Karl Deutsch and David Singer termed systemic “stability”.
In the absence of a hegemonic navy or the practices of sea control, the decentered world of maritime Asia was based on the shared management of this trading system. The different actors in this maritime world pursued multitudes of practices out of their own self-interest. These practices were tantamount to the “rules” governing this trading world. China provided access to its large market while injecting prestige commodities like silk textiles by manipulating the rituals of the tributary system. The Southeast Asians actively connected maritime Asia even as they vigorously competed. The eastward-oriented Indic polities also injected important goods like cotton textiles, while Indian merchants joined their Southeast Asian counterparts along these networks. Later, the addition of Chinese traders in maritime Asia beginning with the Song happened in the absence of coercion, and they coexisted alongside preexisting traders. The multiplex order of this trading system emerged from the interaction of all these decentralized practices, which were undertaken by different polities in the pursuit of different functional and social needs.
Although China did exercise a loose form of primacy through the tributary rituals, it did not play a hegemonic role. First, there was no hegemonic peace or Pax Sinica in this maritime world as the eastern Indian Ocean did experience warfare. In fact, several wars were initiated by different Chinese empires themselves. In the absence of a Chinese navy in Southeast Asia prior to the Yuan, the Chinese empires attempted to manage regional security only rhetorically. For example, not only was Champa a continual menace for the Chinese empires to their south, but China also sought to discipline Champa in 1167 through “refusal to accept tribute from the Cham court” instead of eradicating Cham “piracy.”[ii] Later, even though the Ming had a powerful navy, China only made a partial attempt to eradicate Asian piracy. While the Ming navy did suppress piracy by destroying Chen Zuyi’s fleets in Palembang in 1407, the returning fleet in 1417 encountered Japanese piracy on the Chinese coast. Ultimately, it was local actors in Southeast Asia like Sriwijaya that tried to control piracy in their own local waters. Security of trade in maritime Asia emerged out of the accretion of such individual efforts. No single naval power controlled the maritime routes stretching from the South China Sea into the Bay of Bengal.
Second, China was not the economic center of this trading system. India was also a core, albeit a multicentered core. Furthermore, Southeast Asia was not an economic periphery of these cores. In fact, Southeast Asia played the pivotal role of connecting maritime Asia with its traders and ships. After China started manufacturing oceangoing vessels under the Song, the Chinese built upon the shipping techniques of the Southeast Asians, and these hybrid Sino-Southeast Asian ships then continued to sail these waters along with local Southeast Asian ships. Additionally, Southeast Asia injected its own commodities into the system (spices and metals).
These Southeast Asian products did not constitute the raw materials for the manufacturing industries of the Chinese and Indian cores. The Southeast Asian demand for Chinese goods was also crucial, and it even provided an important stimulus for some Chinese empires such as the Song. More important, maritime Asian resources did not flow into China at the expense of the region. In fact, some Chinese empires became poorer with the outflow of cash into Southeast Asia. The benefits of the Chinese tributary system were more equitable because it was simply one part of a wider maritime commercial network in the eastern Indian Ocean. By contrast, given the direction of the flow of revenue and the very different meaning of tribute there, it was in the Rome-centric Mediterranean that a “tributary” economy actually existed.
Third and finally, maritime Asia did not fall under China’s cultural domination. According to Charles Kupchan, hegemonic powers “seek to extend to their expanding spheres of influence the norms that provide order within their own polities.” While the Mediterranean did Hellenize/Romanize because of Roman imperialism, China made “no attempts to Sinicize” Southeast Asia.[iii] Given its own unique history, northern Vietnam did Sinicize. Outside of northern Vietnam, no polity in Southeast Asia emulated China’s domestic political model. Throughout this truly decentered region, it was Indic ideas that spread through the process of localization (as opposed to Indic imperialism).
In sum, despite power asymmetry with China and the spread of Indic politico-cultural ideas, it was Southeast Asia’s active local initiative in the security, economic, and ideational realms that collectively produced a nonhegemonic international order through the shared management of maritime Asia. In fact, the classical eastern Indian Ocean is the paradigmatic case of such a decentered and multiplex world order. It also provides a useful framework for reshaping world order as the U.S.- and Western-dominated Liberal International Order comes to an end.
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