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Robert E. KellyA 'Confucian Long Peace' in pre-Western East Asia?

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18(3) 407 –430

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DOI: 10.1177/1354066111409771

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E J R I

A ‘Confucian Long Peace’ inpre-Western East Asia?

Robert E. KellyPusan National University, Korea

Abstract

International Relations theory about East Asia has increasingly argued that East Asiabefore Western penetration enjoyed a protracted peace. As explanations, a Chinese

military hegemony would fit realist theory fairly well, while a cultural peace basedon shared Confucian norms would be a significant anomaly. A Confucian Long Peace

challenges widely held, albeit Eurocentric, realist presumptions including the perils of

anarchy, the arms-racing and misperception of the security dilemma, and the regularityof power balancing. This article therefore investigates, first, whether such a peace

did in fact exist, and, second, whether this might be attributed to Confucianism. Acultural peace theory requires a strong anti-war cultural norm and a shared sense of

community. Skepticism is established by examining three comparative cultural spaces

that nonetheless did not enjoy a culturally informed peace: the classical Greek city-state system, early modern Christendom, and the contemporary Arab state system.

All were deeply riven and competitive. Nevertheless, empirical investigation of thelast Chinese (Qing) dynasty before the Western arrival (1644–1839) demonstrates

that it was remarkably peaceful toward its Confucian neighbors, while more

‘normally’ exploiting its power asymmetry against non-Confucian ones. Process-tracing specialized Chinese practices toward fellow Confucians suggests that the low

Confucian war finding emanates from cultural restraint.

Keywords

Confucianism, culture, East Asia, International Relations theory, Long Peace, war

Corresponding author:

Robert E. Kelly, Department of Political Science and Diplomacy, College of Social Sciences, Pusan NationalUniversity, 30 Jangjeon-dong, Geumjeong-gu, Busan, 609-735, Korea.

Email: [email protected]

409771 EJTXXX10.1177/1354066111409771KellyEuropean Journal of International Relations

Article


虽然

即使

怀疑论

peril： n. 危险；冒险

vt. 危及；置 …于险境

v. 撕裂

（ rive的

过去分词）







408 European Journal of International Relations 18(3)

Introduction

The question of Asia’s distinctiveness is growing in International Relations theory

(IR), perhaps as Asia’s weight in global politics increases. The study of Asian IR is

increasingly theoretically informed (Hui, 2005; Johnston, 1995, 2007; Kang, 2007,2010a; Kim, 2008; Zhang and Zhang, 2010), and consequently challenges from newly

examined data are arising against theories built primarily on modern, North Atlantic

cases (Archarya, 2003/4; Kang, 2003, 2003/4, 2010a). One element of this increasing

discussion is a ‘Long Peace,’ possibly rooted in shared, war-reducing Confucian ideals,

in East Asia before the arrival of the West in force with the Opium War (1839–42) (Moon

and Suh, 2007).

This article examines this question, which to date has only been vaguely drawn and

mildly IR-theoretically informed. A growing number of IR scholars have noted that East

Asia’s pre-Western history generally seems less violent and its wars less epochal thanearly modern Europe’s (Chanda, 2006; Kang, 2008, 2010a; Tang, 2010). Historians have

noted that East Asia was never racked by the extremes of religious conflict both within

and between the Abrahamic monotheistic faiths. ‘All-in’ systemic wars, inquisitions, and

genocides were rare. Nor did China pursue ocean-going imperialism despite a capability

(Spence, 1999; Wommack, 2010; Woodside, 1998). Given China’s long and well-known

struggles with its northern and western ‘barbarians,’ neighbors, notions of a peaceful

character in East Asian foreign relations have turned to China’s relations with its

Confucianized periphery — Korea, Japan, and Vietnam (Kang, 2008, 2010a). A cursory

overview of East Asian history does suggest that imperial China’s use of force was much

more common and brutal toward non-Confucian populations (Johnston, 1995). Hencethe notion of a Confucian Peace. And given that China’s best-managed dynasties kept a

general peace in the Confucian space for centuries, there may be several ‘Confucian

Long Peaces’ in East Asian history.

This article continues with a brief examination of IR’s paradigms regarding a ‘peace,’

and why moments of ‘long peace’ appear so distinctive. I next elaborate a theory for a

cultural Confucian Peace, based in a strong anti-war norm and shared sense of in-group

distinction from outsiders. I then propose the method to examine whether such a peace

existed: counting war years of inter-Confucian state conflict between the Qing dynas-

ty’s founding (1644) and the arrival of the West in force (1839). I apply my theory of

cultural peace to Qing China and three other comparative cases — the classical Greek

city-state system, early modern Christendom, and the contemporary Arab state system.

Confucian Asia is found to have just one war year out of the 195 considered — a far

better ratio than the others. I conclude with several methodological ‘prebuttals’ and sug-

gestions for future research on why East Asia enjoyed such quiet while early modern

Western Europe especially did not. IR theory, too heavily built on modern Western

cases, struggles with that question.

Theory of a pax The idea of a pax or ‘peace,’ modified by some relevant adjective, is now a common one in

IR. Well-known examples include a Pax Britannica and Pax Americana (Carr, 1946;







Kelly 409

Kennedy, 1987), a Democratic Peace (Brown et al., 1996), a Liberal Peace (Doyle, 2005), a

Nuclear Peace (Rauchhaus, 2009), a Long Peace (Lebow, 1995), and even a Geriatric Peace

(Haas, 2007). East Asian IR’s proposition of a Confucian Peace fits this growing literature.

The notion of a ‘peace’ as distinct and noteworthy comes from the, broadly realist,expectation that war is quite common, even normal, in world politics. War functions as a

tool to maintain balance among autonomy-preferring actors. Power-seekers or revision-

ists will face sovereignty-jealous opponents. Should they push their demands, resistance

in the form of war is likely. Hence, war is a ‘natural,’ even ‘mechanical,’ product of

anarchy (Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, 2009: 352–355; Wohlforth et al., 2007, 2009). As

Eilstrup-Sangiovanni notes (2009: 372), war is ‘normal’ because stability, not peace, is

the primary goal of states in the realist paradigm underlying so much IR writing on war:

‘While many see the balance of power as a means to maintain peace or preserve the sta-

tus quo, there is broad agreement that these goals are incidental to the more fundamental

aim of preserving the independence of major powers by forestalling hegemony.’ In short,if ‘war is a legitimate tool of statecraft’ (Jervis, 1985: 60), then any protracted peace is

worthy of investigation.

The grounds of these episodes of peace vary across the big paradigms of IR. Pax

Britannica and Pax Americana fit realist notions of hegemony and power preponderance.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, the US and Britain, sometimes in tandem, sometimes at

odds, mixed international economic hegemony with a security role of offshore balancing

(Gilpin, 1981; Kindleberger, 1996; Layne, 2007). Together they defeated or contained

various Eurasian revisionists for two centuries (Kelly, 2010). A Nuclear Peace too would

fit here. Technology is a part of the structural background against which states move.

Realism can theoretically integrate the war-reducing value of nuclear weapons, because

nuclear weapons dramatically rebalance the cost–benefit equation of war (i.e. war no

longer pays; Waltz and Sagan, 2002).

Liberal versions of a peace stress domestic characteristics. The Democratic Peace has

fractured into a democratic and liberal school, the latter drifting toward social construc-

tivism. Both seek to explain the fairly robust empirical finding that democracies do not

make war on one another. Neo-liberal institutionalists stress the war-slowing features of

democratic decision-making, while more normatively inclined liberals stress the sense of

community or ‘we-ness’ that democracies feel for each other ( American Political Science

Review, 2005; Moaz and Russett, 1993). Doyle (2005) currently refers to a Liberal,rather than Democratic, Peace.

A Confucian Peace would fit social constructivism, as it is a cultural explanation.1

Constructivist approaches are popular in Asian IR given the paucity of European-

derived realist or liberal behaviors (Acharya, 2008: 61, 69–73). For example, Kang

notes (2003/4, 2010b) that counter-Chinese balancing is thin in Asia, despite twenty

years of predictions of China as a threat (Friedberg, 1993/4; Mearsheimer, 2006;

Medeiros, 2005/6). Asian regionalism too violates European-derived notions of institu-

tions’ roles (Jones and Smith, 2007), focused as it is on sovereignty-reinforcement and

prestige-taking rather than integration and binding rules (Kelly, 2007). Kang (2008: 4)

argues that ‘between 1368 and 1841 — almost five centuries — there were only twowars between China, Korea, Vietnam, and Japan.’ As such, the notion of a Confucian

peace has merged with the post-1945 notion of the Long Peace (Gaddis, 1989).









Oren and Hays (1997: 494) note the propensity to examine ‘peaces’ that reflect US

preferences for liberalism and democracy, but:

if we were to classify states by categories borrowed from non-Western cultural or

socioeconomic settings, we might discover cross-national variations in conflict propensity

that are no less substantial than those uncovered by studies of democratic foreign policy .…

A more general proposition about the peacefulness of countries that are similar relative to

some normative benchmark … [would note] a variety of attributes — linguistic, religious,

socioeconomic, political, geographic, etc — by which countries can be classified into

groups.

Analytically, there is no reason that episodes of peace might not exist, based on other

‘normative benchmarks,’ such as culture, and Oren and Hays in fact discovered a

‘Socialist Peace.’ The following effort to theorize a possible Confucian Peace fits thisanalytical opportunity.

Theory of a Confucian Long Peace

The notion of cultural peace suggests that a shared collection of lifestyles and habits —

shared ‘logics of appropriateness’ (March and Olson, 1989) or Oren and Hays’ ‘norma-

tive benchmark’ — ethically or emotionally bond the peoples of independent states

together into a security community. An underlying substrate of shared ethnicity, reli-

gion, or other ethical values unites a population and builds an ‘imagined community,’even though the actual political one is fractured (Anderson, 2006). As Figure 1 sug-

gests, although the states are distinct polities, the underlying citizenries of a cultural

peace space do not feel themselves culturally distinct. They share a pan-state commu-

nity; modern examples might include the Islamic transnational umma or Hispanic Latin

America. In this model, the states are seen as somewhat artificial, perhaps even a for-

eign imposition (the pan-Arab system today, for example). The ‘real’ (ethical/religious/

ethnic) community is that below the passing configurations of ephemeral politics. The

argument here parallels established IR literatures on security communities and the

Democratic Peace in identifying a shared variable as generating ‘we-ness,’ which slows

the choice for war.Traditionally, the security community literature has stressed democracy, liberalism, or

modernity as the basis for a shared sense of underlying ‘we-ness’ (Adler and Barnett,

Polities Japan China Korea Vietnam

Cultural Base or Substratum Confucianism

Figure 1. Model of a politically divided cultural community








Kelly 411

1998; Deutsch et al., 1968), but this is not available in Asia or much of the world’s past.

Acharya (2009), for example, argues that ASEAN is struggling to craft a security com-

munity based on shared diplomatic norms (the ‘ASEAN Way’) and a shared, albeit rick-

ety, culture (postcolonial ‘Asianism’). Hence, Confucian ‘we-ness’ would not have theovertly philosophic or institutional texture of a liberal or democratic sense of community.

Bull (1995: 13) famously describes such a ‘society of states … [as] a group of states,

conscious of certain common interests and common values, [that] form a society in the

sense that they conceive themselves to be bound by a common set of rules in their rela-

tions with one another, and share in the working of common institutions.’ These societal

norms build on top of the already existing established interaction capacity of a system.2

This article expands this to examine Confucian culture as a source of Bull’s ‘common

values’ in pre-Western East Asia.

A cultural version of a long peace must specify ‘logics of appropriateness’ as causal

mechanisms for the retardation of war and the creation of a security community (Hui,2005: 18ff.). As a ‘second image’ explanation, a cultural peace theory looks inward for

state attributes (in this case cultural, but possibly any of Oren and Hays’ ‘normative

benchmarks’) as independent variables to drive the war/peace dependent variable (Oren

and Hays, 1997: 493, 496). I propose two.

First, are the culture’s ethics inherently anti-war? Does it define war as a sin, immoral,

unethical, a betrayal of principle, and so on? The well-known pacifism of Buddhism, for

example, would suggest that committed adherents would be less likely to use violence.

Similarly, Christianity’s ‘turn-the-other-check’ New Testament ethic broadly encourages

peace, and sanctions only ‘just war’ when absolutely necessary. Devout Christians should

hardly be expansionists or revisionists, at least among their own. Conversely, it is pos-

sible to conceive of Homeric or ‘Jacksonian’ social ethics on war — noble war in service

of honor, revenge, glory, or masculinity (Gat, 2009; Mead, 2001: ch. 7) — or even war-

encouraging cultural matrixes (Mosse, 1966).

Second, does the culture have specific war-retarding diplomatic norms that co-cultur-

alists would recognize and follow? In other words, does the sharing of the culture across

citizenries — not its inherent anti-war character of the first point above — encourage

them to self-perceive a community among the sharers (we-ness) within which warfare

would be an inappropriate diplomatic choice? For example, for much of the Middle

Ages, the papacy tried to provide an (albeit self-aggrandizing) framework for Christiandiplomatic relations. Muslim polities on Europe’s fringe did not enjoy access to these

conventions and were considered barbarians against whom Crusade was permissible.

Nineteenth-century European states notoriously applied a civilized–uncivilized dichot-

omy that legitimized extreme force overseas (Keene, 2002). Conversely, failed imagined

communities are equally possible. Would-be participants in an international society may

reject purported common values, such as the American response to Vincente Fox’s pro-

posed ‘North American community’ (Hawkins, 2006; Public Broadcasting System/

Newshour, 2000). Self-perception as a cultural community is logically necessary for a

cultural internal peace to exist. A Confucian version would utilize specific Confucian

attributes to answer these two questions affirmatively.First, Confucianism was ethically opposed to the use of force, both at the individual

level and as a tool of statecraft, especially between Confucianized peoples (Dreyer,








2002: 22–23; Higham and Graff, 2002: 13–16; Johnston, 1995: xi; Kang, 2010a: 8–11;

Woodside, 1998). This is a central ethical and political maxim of Confucianism. Wright

(1960: 4, 8) notes Confucius’s:

vision of perfected men living in a stable and harmonious sociopolitical order.… The well-

ordered patriarchal family is the microcosm of the order that should prevail in state and

society.… The values implicit in the Confucian vision are those of harmony, stability, and

hierarchy. Moral force is held to be superior to coercion, and morally perfected men are the

only ones entitled to manage the affairs of society and the state.… Undesirable change is

violent, precipitated by uncultivated men [and] will lead society away from the moral order

and into chaos and ruin.… Chinese politics finds all questions of state policy — domestic

reform, foreign policy … and military matters — argued in terms of moral principles.

Miyakawa (1960: 43) quotes an early Qing official who lists the proper virtues as ‘filial piety, fraternal love, faithfulness, sincerity, propriety, righteousness, integrity, and sense

of shame.’ This is hardly the package for robust imperialists like the Mongols or

Napoleonic French; rather, it recalls Edward Gibbon’s famous complaint that pacific

Christians sapped the martial strength of the late Roman empire.

Ceteris paribus, adopting such values slows the march to war; that is, Confucianism

will have a war-dampening effect. States that adopt it as an ideology are less likely to be

war-like because of Confucianism’s strong condemnation of violence as a tool for con-

flict resolution (among those who accept it). The specific war-retarding causal mecha-

nisms (intervening variables) are Confucianism’s emphasis on (1) respect for the older

and more educated, (2) social harmony, and (3) social hierarchy (de Bary, 1991; Fisher,

2008: ch. 6; Kang, 2010b: 42; Smith, 1994: 139–150; Swope, 2011: 10, 12, 18; Tu, 1996;

Wang, 2011: 7–8). These mechanisms concretize Confucian-specific, contextual inter-

vening variables out of the broad independent variables sketched above.

Confucianism promoted a patriarchal rather than competitive (or realist) understand-

ing of regional, ‘non-barbarian,’ relations. China, as the oldest, most culturally

‘advanced’ state in the region, enjoyed formal ‘virtuous superiority’ to Korea, Japan,

and Vietnam, but allowed them substantial informal leeway in the tribute system

(Fairbank, 1968; Kang, 2010a; Nakajima, 2010; Wommack, 2010: chs 1, 7). War would

violate harmony and order, by showing disrespect to the patriarch or senior (China), or by improperly abusing of the juniors (Korea, Japan, Vietnam) (Smith, 1994: 137–150;

Swope, 2011; Tu, 1996; Wade, 2011). Even Sino-Japanese tension was read within this

Confucian framework, resulting in only one major, pre-Westphalian conflict (the Imjin

War of the 1590s). Confucianism stressed filial piety, not autocracy, and, while hierar-

chic, it included two-way obligations (Bell, 2006; Chow, 1960: 303–305). The sage

Confucian king’s role was to discipline and control (especially the rambunctious

Japanese ‘child’), but not to tyrannize or conquer those already within the enlightened

fold; respectful juniors who followed the rituals and recognized the Chinese sun should

be left more or less alone (Johnston, 1995; Wright, 1960: 9).

Second, Confucianism created a unique diplomatic language for Confucian states(Johnston, 1995; Kang, 2010a, 2010b). Imperial China handled its relations with

Confucian polities through a distinct portion of the imperial bureaucracy (the Ministry







Kelly 413

of Rituals). Spence (1999: 117–118) notes that ‘relations with non-Chinese people were

instead conducted by a variety of bureaus and agencies that … implied or stated the

cultural inferiority and geographic marginality of foreigners.’ The Confucian practice of

investiture — the Chinese emperor’s legitimization of vassals’ kings (most importantlyin Korea and Vietnam) — guaranteed a measure of non-interference not enjoyed by

‘barbarians’ (Lee, 2011: 4). The ritual surrounding this practice was time-consuming and

manifested the patriarchal, rather than competitive, understanding of relations, which

Confucian peripheral states (least of all Japan though) accepted as culturally proper.

China took its ‘paternal’ obligations seriously (Swope, 2011). China also administered

its own non-Confucian provinces separately from its Han ones (Peterson, 2002: 8).

The more Confucianized the polity, the greater the respect accorded it in the

Sinocentric world. Confucianization, not power, incurred China’s respect (Fairbank,

1968; Kim, 2008: 37–39; Nakajima, 2010; Woodside, 1998). Korea, for example,

enjoyed pride of place in the tribute system (Lee, 2011) because she was, in the wordsof traditional Korean historiography, ‘more Confucian than China herself’ (Cumings,

2005: 78). Yet Korea’s military power was negligible compared to others in the tribute

system. Nor did Korea and other tributaries necessarily understand their position in the

system to mean hegemonic reduction or bandwagoning out of fear; Chinese cultural

superiority was generally accepted, even if resentfully in Japan (Kang, 2010a; Lee,

2011). While Korea, Vietnam, and Japan were distinct polities from China with coher-

ent borders dating to the end of the first millennium, they were bound within the

Sinocentric society of states, geopolitically defining themselves in relation to a Chinese

center (Kang, 2010a: 33–49). Contemporary political theory often codes Confucianism

as ‘communitarian’ rather than despotic (Bell, 2006).

China’s Confucian neighbors shared a Chinese-based language family that smoothed

communication and provided distinct in-group cultural artefacts, such as envoy poetry,

from which the others were excluded (Kelley, 2005; Wright, 1960: 6). Very similarly

trained and examined Confucian bureaucrats and intellectuals used the tribute system to

interact among the four countries, so building a distinct literary space (Elman et al.,

2002). Finally, Confucian we-ness did encourage a sharp distinction between in- and out-

groups. Out-group non-Confucians could be Confucianized by force for their own good

by ‘righteous war’ (Miyakawa, 1960: 22–27; Spence, 1999: 96; Wang, 2011: 9; Woodside,

1998; Wright, 1960: 10).A Western parallel would be ‘feudalism that works’ — unlike Europe’s actual experi-

ence where vassals routinely rebelled. The shared Confucian ethic strongly discouraged

the use of force against those who had adopted the enlightenment (unlike the ‘barbari-

ans,’ especially in the north and west). And Confucianism provided a shared cultural

matrix of speech and practice within which rituals Confucians could practice peaceful

interchange (Lee, 2011; Purdue, 1996: 783ff.). Lesser Confucian states recognized

China’s formal superiority, but were de facto independent and unmolested (Kang,

2010a; Swope, 2011). So the causal arrow would run from shared anti-war culture

(independent variable) to the specific war-dampening cultural aspects of Confucianism

(intervening variable) to peace (dependent variable). However, non-Confucians wouldnot fall into these categories. A common misunderstanding of the Democratic Peace

is that democracies never war. In the same way that democracies continue to war on








non-democracies, so a theory of Confucian Peace does not predict peace with non-

Confucians (Wade, 2011: 7ff.).

Methodology

I operationalize the ‘Confucian space’ as China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam (Elman

et al., 2002). They are widely understood to share a common cultural heritage dating to

the beginning of Confucianism in the last few centuries BC. Confucius (551–479 BC)

and his most important disciple Mencius (390–305 BC) generated the basic tenets of

Confucianism that spread throughout this space in the millennium after Mencius’s death.

With its spread came the Chinese language and other socio-political attributes that built

a self-perceived cultural space — including shared norms of foreign relations — among

Japan, China, Vietnam, and Korea no later than the second millennium AD (Fisher, 2008:

chs 6–7; Krasner, 2001; Wright, 1960).The maximum possible dates for a Confucian Peace would be from Confucianism’s

first spread beyond its birthplace (China) to a second polity, until the collapse of the

second-to-last Confucian polity in Asia. I say second-to-last, because the last one must

have at least one other Confucian polity with which to interact in order for there to be a

possible Confucian Peace between them.

Confucianism became the state ideology of the Chinese Han dynasty around 100 BC,

with the first state examinations based on the Confucian Classics. It spread first to Korea

during the Three Kingdoms period (mid-first millennium AD). This bookmarks the

beginning of a possible Confucian Peace. At the other end, Japan turned away from tra-ditional rule with the 1868 Meiji restoration, and Vietnam lost its independence to France

by 1884. In 1910, Japan eliminated through annexation the second-to-last Confucian

state, Korea’s Choseon dynasty. (A year later the last Confucian emperor of China would

abdicate, and East Asia became fully a part of the Westphalian system.)

Hence, the longest possible timeline runs from c. 500AD to 1910, providing some

1400 possible years of Confucian Peace. However, conclusion from most of this history

could be contested as impressionistic and indeterminate. For the following reasons, I

focus on the 195 years between 1644 and 1839:

First, traditionally, Confucianism arrived, lastly, in Vietnam in 1070. China, Korea,

and Japan were Confucianized by then, and therefore a Confucian Peace was analytically possible between 500 and 1070. But a more robust test of a Confucian Peace would

include as many actors as possible. Retaining Vietnam therefore limits the time frame to

1070–1910 (Anderson, 2011: 24).

Second, to examine whether China, Japan, Vietnam, and Korea did not war on each

other requires that they perceive themselves to be in a system together. If not, then a find-

ing of ‘peace’ between them might simply confuse inability to project power, a lack of

interaction capability, with a peace. For example, one might posit a Transatlantic Peace

between Britain and the Native Americans before 1492. But this is obviously flawed

because they were incapable of interacting.

In this article, I accept the standard IR, strategic definition of a system. Units belong

to an international system if ‘the behavior of each is a necessary factor in the calculations

of others’ (Bull and Watson, 1984: 1), and this is, ceteris paribus, more likely later in







Kelly 415

history due to improved technology. To avoid the counter-argument that the earliest

Confucian states simply could not reach each other for serious conflict, I focus on the

final years of Confucian diplomatic history. For example, in 1683 the Chinese Qing

dynasty seized Taiwan, suggesting that a major water borne assault on Japan was alsotechnically feasible. Better technology means higher interaction capability (Buzan and

Little, 2000: chs 9, 13); distant Vietnam and Japan especially would be more capable of

interaction later in history. Specifically, the cheaper the cost of power projection, the

more likely war is between the system components. An easier loss of strength gradient

should make war a more attractive option (Lemke, 2002). As such, the last years of the

Confucian system should be the toughest test case of a Confucian Peace.

Third, the most modern cases are also the most likely to be well documented, unless

some particular catastrophe intervenes. Eilstrup-Sangiovanni (2009) argues that IR the-

ory reaching far back into poorly documented history, plagued by gaps in records, can

easily become impressionistic. It is easy to misunderstand how and to what extent poli-ties interacted with each other when the data are thin or heavily biased — for example,

by the existence solely of Chinese dynastic records that may wish to whitewash intra-

Confucian conflict in order to support imperial claims of universal acceptance and rule

(Krasner, 2001). There will be exceptions, such as heavily researched classical Greece,

but projecting IR theory onto poorly understood civilizations such as pre-Columbian

America or early Mesopotamia may court endless controversy over the historical data

rather than the IR theory.

If the ‘world historical approach’ can create false positives, then the more recent the

case, the more likely the history is understood. More recent cases are more likely to have

surviving diplomatic records, and literacy should be higher. These records are more

likely to come from multiple sources, including foreigners. Archeological evidence is

likely richer. Archives are fuller and better understood. Ideally, historians are in greater

agreement about the empirical record even if their interpretations conflict. So later

Confucian history is a sounder test.

Fourth, given China’s enormous comparative strength and geographic centrality, it was

most likely to be involved in any intra-Confucian wars. Hence, China’s dynasties frame

the relevant time-series. Imperial China’s history is extraordinarily long by the measures

of time common in IR. The first entity to coherently approximate integrated ‘China’ is the

Qin dynasty, founded in 221 BC.3

Before this, political entities in Chinese space were sosmall and so multitudinous that it is a historiographic reach to speak of ‘China’. The Qin

created the title ‘emperor’, and their successors, the Han, formally adopted Confucianism

as the state ideology. In accord with the second and third points above, this article exam-

ines solely China’s last dynasty, the Qing, from its founding in 1644 until the Opium War

(began in 1839). The Opium War so undermines the Confucian system (Kang, 2010a,

2010b; Krasner, 2001) throughout Asia that I stop with it. The post-Meiji Restoration

Japan of the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95) had so radically ‘de-Confucianized’ from

the previous Tokugawa Shogunate that this war is hardly a violation of a Confucian Peace.

Fifth and finally, of China’s many Confucianized dynasties (15–20, between the

Han and Qing), the Qing were among the most warlike. In the possible universe of aConfucian Peace (500–1910), China repeatedly fought wars with its northern and

western ‘barbarian’ or nomadic neighbors. Under the Qing, the empire engaged in a








major, decades-long effort to finally crush them. Enormous resources were marshaled

to project hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of soldiers and support staff

thousands of miles into central Asia and Mongolia in the 18th century (Hui, 2010;

Lococo, 2002; Perdue, 1996, 2005). For a pre-industrial military (without motorizedtransport or refrigeration) this was an astonishing mobilization of power, which, turned

eastward, would easily have crushed China’s Confucian neighbors. Nor were the Qing

gentle in their treatment of the newly conquered. The Zunghar Mongolians were exter-

minated completely in a deliberate genocide and enslavement (approximately 600,000

people) in the 1750s (Perdue, 1996). In short, the Qing were quite expansionist in

preference and possessed the power to impose their will decisively and brutally. If they

did not attack the low-hanging fruit of weaker, closer, wealthier Confucian states, as

they often did their non-Confucian neighbors, that is strong evidence for a differentia-

tion of foreign policy based on Confucian ideals.4

History: Four would-be cultural peaces

Cultural peace periods do not appear common in international relations, and skepticism

of a Confucian Peace is justified. Hence, I first examine three other systems divided by

space and time with a strong similar claim to a common cultural base. Nonetheless, clas-

sical Greece, early modern Christendom, and the contemporary Arab state system have

all fallen into frequent, intense violence. Cultural calls for unity have failed or hypo-

critically served the geopolitical purposes of imminent losers or would-be hegemons.

This material provides a baseline by which to judge Confucianism’s success as a war-retarding cultural force.

Classical Greece is a well-known, heavily researched case in IR. As an independent

system with full interaction capability, its least disputable dates stretch from the defeat of

the second, large Persian invasion at Plataea (479 BC) to Philip II of Macedon’s success

at the battle of Chaeronea (338 BC). Plataea ensured the Greeks’ independence to war or

not against one another, while Philip’s victory led to the coerced League of Corinth,

whose members agreed not to war on each other. Although the classical period of Greek

history is usually dated to Alexander’s death in 323, the years 338–323 do not verify a

‘Hellenic Peace’, because that peace was coerced by Macedonian power, not shared

‘Greek-ness’ (Hornblower, 2002). This provides 141 years of Greek diplomatic history.The Greeks clearly thought of themselves as distinct from those around them. The

great political thinkers of classical Greece, including Herodotus, Thucydides, Aristotle,

and Plato, routinely and unselfconsciously refer to non-Greeks as ‘barbarians,’ and the

great geopolitical slur of the age was to ‘medize’ — to cooperate with the Persians. States

that did not medize during the Persian Wars enjoyed great prestige, and Athens, which was

razed by the Persians in 480 and led the anti-Persian coalition, morally justified its hegem-

onic Delian League on the basis of this acclaim. Crane (1998) speaks of an ideology of

‘Hellenism’ built on the notion of Greek cultural difference, if not superiority, captured

most famously in Pericles’ speeches in Thucydides’ and Herodotus’ depictions of the

‘East’. However, this shared Hellenistic ideology was not coupled with an anti-war ethic.

If anything, classical Greeks viewed military competition for glory as ethically acceptable

if not desirable. The desire for excellence frequently conflated moral and physical virtue







Kelly 417

into a Homeric cult of the strong, whose most obvious geopolitical expression was the

Melian Dialogue (Hamilton, 1930; Lebow, 2003; Lebow and Kelly, 2001; Renault, 1956).

This period was one of almost constant systemic wars between the biggest Greek

actors. Despite a shared cultural substrate, there was no end to the plotting, skirmishes,aggrandizement, treaty violation, and extended large-scale conflict on both land and sea.

For this reason, ancient Greece is so frequently seen as the emblematic case for realism

(Lebow and Strauss, 1991). A brief military history of those 141 years shows that 73 of

them were spent at war.5

After the defeat of the Persian invasion, the Delian League rapidly morphed into an

empire. Within 20 years, Athens and Sparta collided in the First Peloponnesian War

(461–446), which included a five-year truce (454–449). Skirmishes, mostly involving

unhappy Athenian ‘allies,’ continued in this interwar period, but the underlying ten-

sions did not dissipate. The Second Peloponnesian War (431–404), documented by

Thucydides, pulled all of the major systemic actors, from as far away as southern Italy,into a general war. But the post-war peace was short-lived. Spartan hegemony was

contested by a broad counter-hegemonic coalition in the inconclusive Corinthian War

(395–386). The wars against Sparta resumed in 378 under Theban leadership, and

Sparta was eventually dethroned in 362 in the wars covered by Xenophon. No state

filled the gap, but the Second Athenian Confederacy tried, provoking the Social War

(357–355). Further confusion and competition result in the also inconclusive Third

Sacred War (356–346). In the succeeding years, the Greeks finally stopped warring

against one another as the menace of Macedon rose. This list of wars includes only

intra-Greek wars involving at least one great power, frequently vying for systemic

dominance (Hui, 2005: 64–65). This continual sequence of conflict among Athens,

Sparta, Thebes, Corinth, and Argos concludes only in the final elimination of Greek

international politics by Philip.

Early modern Christendom provides another example of a failed cultural peace. Bull

(1995: 26–31) argues that a Christian international society emerged from the collapsing

medieval order of the Catholic Church. Again, this time period is heavily researched by

IR theory, with the final emergence of the state from conflicting, overlapping medieval

ties dated to 1648. At the other end, by the 19th century, the ‘notion of Western

Christendom came almost to disappear from the theory and practice of international poli-

tics’ (Bull, 1995: 31). So the 1789 onset of the French Revolution and the consequentexplosion of secular nationalism bookend this period well. The period 1648–1789 pro-

vides 151 years of diplomatic history.

The ancient Greeks are a mixed test of cultural peace, because while sharing a cul-

ture, that culture encouraged striving and competition, including a lust for geopolitical

glory. But New Testament-based Christianity communicates a much clearer anti-war

ethic, and, as Bull notes, Western Christendom saw itself as distinct from Islam most

obviously, but also Orthodox or Eastern Christianity. This difference was clearly

expressed in the rationalizations for both overseas colonialism and frequent pressure on

the Ottoman Empire.

Yet it did not stop the Christian states from warring on each other. The years 1648– 1789 are so heavily researched in IR, unlike Greece 404–338 BC, that a diplomatic his-

tory is unnecessary. Levy (1982: 284–285; 1983) usefully lists all the conflicts of this








period, finding 92 years of intra-Western Christian war involving at least one great power

(wars against the Ottomans are excluded). Intra-Christendom ‘highlights’ include: the

Franco-Spanish War, the Great Northern War, the Dutch War of Louis XIV, the War of

the League of Augsburg, three wars of succession (Spanish, Polish, and Austrian), theSeven Years War, and the American Revolution. Given the frequency with which the

‘English School’ employs early modern Europe as an example of Gemeinschaft versus

Gesellschaft (Bull, 1995; Buzan, 1993; Buzan et al., 1993; Watson, 2009), this is an

awkward finding. Despite a resolutely anti-war cultural matrix and shared diplomatic

Christian protocols, Europeans were quite content to violently strive against one another.

Indeed, Levy’s data suggest far more war among Western Christians than between them

and others. Hui (2005: ch. 3) finds the same, asserting that ‘a norm-based system did not

exist in … early modern Europe’ (Hui, 2005: 18).

A final case that suggests skepticism for the notion of a cultural peace is the experi-

ence of the modern Arab state system. This case most easily fits the image of Figure 1(Mellon, 2002). Arab and non-Arab analysts alike perceive the current political division

of Arab cultural space to be artificial and externally imposed. Colonial powers, the

Ottomans included, literally drew lines in the sand to accord with external interests, not

local cultural integrity. The magnetic pull of pan-Arabism has its roots in this plain arti-

ficiality. This cultural unity is institutionally enshrined in the Arab League. The Arab

League member states are the relevant Arab state community.

Less clear is the existence of an anti-conflict norm among the Arab states. Smith

(2010) and Ajami (1978/9, 1992, 1997, 1998) argue that modern Arab culture has a cult

of the strong, and Lewis argues that this stems from the tribalism of pre-modern Arab life

and the deep influence of fascist ideologies at the birth of pan-Arabism (2004: ch. 17;

also Boroumand and Boroumand, 2002; Fattah and Fierke, 2009). Much other research

blames radicalization on the Arab–Israeli dispute (Hinnebusch, 2005; Kamrava, 2005;

Milton-Edwards, 2006: chs 2, 4; Smith, 2005). Regardless of the cause, it seems inap-

propriate to attach a strong anti-war norm to the Arab cultural matrix (as might be for

Islam’s clearer anti-violence religious dictum to the umma).

The modern Arab state system emerges with decolonization and the first Arab–Israeli

conflict, and ends with the second US invasion of Iraq (Kamrava, 2005: 171, 192–196).

The period 1948–2003 provides 55 years of diplomatic history. The Correlates of War

(CoW) data set lists only the 1990–1 Gulf War as an inter-Arab state war.6

The NorthYemen War (1962–9) is coded as intra-state war, but I double-code it here to be an inter-

state war as well, given its protracted and extensive Egyptian and Saudi involvement

(Kamrava, 2005; Levy, 1982: 283, fn. 9). This analysis returns eight war years, although

an inclusion of the Libyan invasion of Chad (1978–87) — because Chad is an Arab

League observer with a 25 percent Arab minority and Arabic as an official language —

would lift that count to 17 (Burr and Collins, 1999).7

By contrast with these other cultural spaces, the Confucian one was remarkably

peaceful between 1644 and 1839. Only one intra-Confucian war occurred: the Chinese

invasion of Vietnam (1788–9). The invasion lasted only two months, and the Chinese

quickly withdrew in early 1789. At no other point did China war on its Confucianneighbors, despite its manifest ability to generate both large fleets and land armies. In

1683, the Qing built a 300-ship fleet to capture Taiwan, then a haven for pirates







Kelly 419

inhabited by non-Han tribal peoples. As Spence (1999: 56) notes, this expeditionary

force demonstrates what a naval power China might have become had it chosen to

reduce Japan as well.

Even more impressive are the long, resource-demanding land conquests in the north-west, west, and south-west — all launched against non-Confucian peoples (Hui, 2010;

Perdue, 2005). In the 17th century, the new Manchu leadership was most concerned with

stamping out Ming resistance and state consolidation (Spence, 1999: ch. 2).This included

an early invasion of (Buddhist) Burma (1661–2), the 1683 conquest of (aboriginal)

Taiwan, and the 1696 conquest of (Buddhist and Muslim) Outer Mongolia. The 18th

century brought further imperialism that gave China its current borders. Emperor Kangxi

reduced (Buddhist) Tibet to tributary status in 1720–1, and the long-serving emperor

Qianlong (r. 1736–99) launched what he later referred to as the ‘Ten Great Campaigns’

(十全武功). In the 1750s, Qianlong finally crushed the long-standing Mongol threat to

China, pushing as far west as Tashkent and exterminating the Zunghars. The Qing theninvaded Burma again in the 1760s. Next were the Jinchuan hill peoples of Sichuan

(1740s, 1770s). Finally, the Gurkhas of Tibet/Nepal were reduced in 1792. In this

immense four-decade expansion that doubled the land size of China, only one brief con-

flict occurred with a Confucian state — Vietnam (December 1788–January 1789) (Hui,

2010; Loccoco, 2002; Spence, 1999: ch. 5).

This brief history leaves no doubt that the Qing possessed the martial spirit and

resources to disrupt the Confucian Peace to the east. The Manchus were another of

China’s conquest dynasties, with a highly organized, formidable, and enormous mili-

tary by global, much less regional, standards. Unlike the Ming dynasty, which suf-

fered from extenuated state decay in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Qing retained

powerful state capacity in the 1644–1839 time frame. (State capacity only became a

critical issue after the West’s arrival.)

In short, the Qing had both an established history of martial expansion, as well as deep

capability to project power. Local, eastern targets would have been more easily subdued

— Tashkent is twice the distance (2500 miles) from Beijing as Tokyo, and no East Asian

military came even close to the Qing’s capabilities. Further, the Confucian periphery

would likely have been absorbed more easily given pre-existing cultural similarities

between it and China. (Woodside, 1998). The nearby Confucian periphery was a richer

target too — demographically and economically. It was more literate, monetized, dense,and proto-industrial than anything across the vast Gobi desert. War against other Confucians

would have paid, and probably much better than in the more backward western interior

(Wohlforth et al., 2007). Worse, Confucian under-balancing against China — that Korea,

Japan, and Vietnam never allied to balance the Qing — should have made the Confucian

periphery a yet easier target (Hui, 2005: 16). That the Qing sought a lower pay-off to the

west, but not a better one (closer, less costly, more rewarding) to the east, evidences the

differential understanding of Confucian, from non-Confucian, foreign relations.

Findings and methodological prebuttalsTable 1 summarizes the findings of the historical overview, indexed against the expecta-

tions generated by the theory of a cultural peace proposed above. Table 1 returns somewhat








contradictory, counter-intuitive findings. This research posits two cultural variables that

would inform a notion of a ‘cultural,’ rather than hegemonic, peace. First, by definition,

‘Jacksonian’ cultural values that endorse conflict as glorifying, macho-masculine,

Darwinistically or eugenically necessary, vitalist, exciting, a competition, a coming-of-age

process, and so on, are unlikely to return a cultural peace. In the pre-modern period dis-

cussed here, the Mongols are an obvious example; they were entirely content to war on

each other as well as others (Lhamsuren, 2010). Fascists, the classical Greeks, or the tribal-

ized Arabs of T.E. Lawrence’s famous experience fit this mould. Second, peace-preferring

values can generate an in-group peace if the culture is shared and if the space’s inhabitants

self-perceive as a distinct ‘imagined community.’ Early Christian Europe is the examplemost touted in IR literature, especially from the English School.

Yet Table 1 provides only limited support for this proposed, bivariable causal pathway

to peace. It appears to work in the Confucian and Arab spaces. Confucianism’s anti-war

ethic and in-group–out-group distinction paved the way for a long peace among

Confucian states. The Arab space was also fairly peaceful. Clearly Arabs share a transna-

tional community, while the contestedness of the claim that Arabs lack an anti-war cul-

tural ethic helps bring their middling Table 1 results in line with my theoretical prediction.

The Greek case is the most indeterminate, because the opposition between the classical

Greek understanding of conflict as morally edifying, and a clear cultural consciousness,

cancels out culture as a war-reducer. Most damaging to my posited independent varia-

bles, however, is the Christian case. Despite a clear anti-war ethic rooted in the New

Testament, and a distinct sense of ‘Christian international society,’ these states easily

warred on one another. The obviously falsely named Christendom smacks of Krasner’s

‘organized hypocrisy’ (2001).

The methodology employed here can be disputed. However, I have tried at all times

to bias my choices against the Qing ‘Confucian Long Peace’ returned here, in order to

make the test of the Qing more difficult.

First, I have excluded intra-state conflicts that would have significantly reduced the

peace percentage of the Greek and Arab cases. It would have reduced the Qing percent-age as well, as much of the second half of the 17th century focused on suppressing Ming

pretenders and the Three Feudatories Revolt. But with the revolt’s defeat in

Table 1. Empirical summary of cultural peace cases

ClassicalGreece

WesternChristendom

Modern Arabstate system

Pre-WesternConfucian-Qing system

Anti-war ethic No Yes No Yes

Society of states Yes Yes Yes Yes

Total war years/Totalsystem years

73/141 92/151 8/55 (17/55)a 1/195

Percentage of ‘culturalpeace’ years

48.22% 39.07% 85.45% (69.09%) 99.48%

aThis second figure includes the Libyan (1978–87) invasion of Chad discussed above.








Kelly 421

1781, intra-Confucian state war ended for the period considered. Conversely, intra-state

conflict in the Arab and Greek cases is far greater. Hence, Table 1 returns the curious

result of an ‘Arab Peace’.

Second, one might object that these gross figures do not capture the intensity of theconflicts (Levy, 1983). Qualified by battle-deaths, resources expended, civilian casual-

ties, one or another might be more or less violent. This is so, but again this would rebound

most harshly against the non-Confucian cases. There are zero Confucian wars between

Korea, Vietnam, and Japan in this period, and only one between China and any of these

three. The Vietnam conflict lasted less than two months, with only 5000 battle deaths; it

is so minor that neither Lococo (2002) nor Swope (2005) cover it. By contrast the

Peloponnesian War (Hanson, 2005: 296), the Seven Years War, and Desert Storm all saw

20 times that number of casualties.

Third, similarly Kang (2008, 2010a) similarly argues that an East Asian Peace reaches

back to the Ming foundation (1368). However, because systemic interaction capacityimproves with technology, I have chosen a later start date. Perhaps Vietnam could not

muster the fleet in the 14th and 15th centuries to actually interact with Japan, hence creat-

ing a false positive. Nor does Kang code the 1788 Qing invasion of Vietnam as a war. If

one accepts Kang’s more generous numbers, the Confucian Long Peace runs for 473 years!

Fourth, another objection would more deeply specify a Confucian Peace against a

Sinic Peace (Acharya, 2003/4; Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, 2009; Hui, 2010; Kang, 2003,

2003/4, 2007, 2008; Wohlforth et al., 2007; Wommack, 2010). A Sinic Peace, like Pax

Britannica and Pax Americana, would be rooted in hegemony, not culture. It would pro-

pose that China’s neighbors bandwagoned with it because it was simply too large to

balance (Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, 2009: 375; Schweller, 1994). But such an ‘interest-based

explanation’ (Sweeney and Fritz, 2004) cannot elucidate (a) the obvious distinction the

Qing dynasty made between Confucian in- and out-groups in its diplomacy, (b) the miss-

ing opportunistic balancing (the logical inverse of bandwagoning) by the Confucian

periphery during difficult moments for the Qing (the long 17th-century consolidation

and extremely resource-demanding 18th-century western wars), (c) the lack of any

detectable anti-Chinese alliance coordination among Korea, Vietnam, and Japan, both

among themselves and/or with China’s other peripheral targets (extreme anti-Sinic

‘underbalancing’ [Schweller, 2004]), and (d) China’s manifest, 200-year disinterest in

invading the Confucian periphery despite ample opportunity and gain to be won.8

A realist/interest-based approach better fits China’s relations with non-Confucians. The

Qing were quite comfortable attacking neighbors including powerful ones like Russia and

Mongolia, just as they were willing to conduct what IR would regard as ‘normal’ diplo-

matic practice with non-Confucians, such as the border treaties of Nerchinsk (1689) and

Kiakhta (1727) with Russia, or the colonization of the western territories (Spence, 1999:

97). Confucian states by contrast were treated differently both militarily and diplomati-

cally. Given that China so willingly waged wars on its neighbors, a Sinic Peace is a theo-

retical bridge too far. China was clearly not that peaceful. But the data do show a fairly

clear direction in that warring away from Confucian neighbors. Hence a Confucian Peace.

Fifth, in a similar vein, a ‘Buddhist Peace’ must also be rejected.9 Buddhism wasindeed shared among China, Japan, Vietnam, and Korea, and it has arguably a deeper,

more explicit anti-war ethic than any other major religion (Fisher, 2008: ch. 5). But








Buddhism never held the enormous sway in these four countries that Confucianism did.

As late as 845, Buddhism in China was outlawed and persecuted. As such, it was never

a state ideology to rival Confucianism, which had such deep roots in and across Confucian

bureaucracies because of the common testing system, the same ‘Confucian Classics’texts, and the shared Chinese language family (Muramatsu, 1960). Finally, Buddhism,

perhaps for internal theological reasons, never structured East Asian diplomacy or pro-

vided a shared diplomatic language as Confucianism did. As a result, the data of China’s

wars show no Buddhist Peace or diplomacy. Buddhist peoples along the Himalayan tier

were reduced repeatedly in the 18th century, including mostly importantly Tibet.

Prospects: Future research in East Asian IR

The findings of this study are mixed. I did find that the proposed Confucian Long Peace

is real. Despite a stricter test than Kang’s (2008, 2010a), I found a lengthy period of peace among Confucian states, plus strong evidence that this peace was based on their

shared Confucianism.

Two other comparison cases — Greeks and Arabs — for culture’s effect on war-making

provide some evidence that my proposed independent variables are generalizable.

However, my effort to establish a more general theory of a cultural peace stumbled badly

on a third, Christian comparison case. Despite a clear anti-war ethic and sense of shared

community (we-ness), Christendom (1648–1789) warred against itself relentlessly,

achieving the lowest ‘peace score’ of the four cases examined. Only Confucian Asia came

out with a strong, uncontestable claim to a cultural long peace (Moon and Suh, 2007).This suggests that either the East Asian case is unique or that other variables are nec-

essary, because culture is just too indeterminate a causal factor (Clark, 2009; Grove,

2010; Lebow, 2009; Mendelsohn, 2009). Insofar as social science strives for universal,

generalizable findings, an inexplicable Confucian Long Peace is a frustrating finding.

Kang’s work repeatedly notes how badly IR theory responds to Asian data that do not

‘fit’ or otherwise ‘do what they are supposed to,’ according to our Eurocentric theory.

This article bolsters that contention by finding a very robust and very lengthy peace iso-

lated around a non-European, non-modern cultural space. This should not simply be

ignored (Hui, 2005; Oren and Hays, 1997: 515).

A second issue for future research is improving the specification of war-retardingcultural variables. My two propositions work reasonably well in three cases, but fail

in the fourth. One possibility reaching into political psychology is in-group competi-

tion for dominance. Perhaps shared culture encourages competition of like against

like, as various states claim leadership of the cultural space as a whole. For example,

every Continental would-be hegemon from Charles V to Hitler claimed that they were

‘uniting Europe’ — usually to battle some outsider (Protestantism, Islam, czarism,

Bolshevism). Further, insiders may save their worst fury and anger for dissenting insid-

ers, not outsiders; perhaps inquisitions fire the martial spirit more than crusades (Hui,

2005: 165, fn. 237). Plutarch and Thucydides both lamented that the ancient Greeks,

despite their shared culture, were far more zealous in destroying each other than uniting

against their common foes, the Persians, Macedonians, and Romans. Nasser’s claims to

lead an Arab bloc should have fit the dream of pan-Arabism, but instead provoked the







Kelly 423

30-year radical–conservative Arab division. Why did this not happen in Asia? Finally,

is there something specific in Christianity that ethically excused so much defection on

‘Christendom,’ and, conversely, does Confucianism have some particularly powerful

ethical bind? One could imagine that Christianity’s overtly divine dicta would morestrictly bind its adherents than Confucianism’s more secular-statist texture, but this was

not so. Religion’s impact on IR is vastly understudied in favor of national interest-based

accounts (Sandal and James, 2011; Warner and Walker, 2011), but there is such a glar-

ing contrast between Christian hypocrisy and Confucian integrity in Table 1’s findings

that it calls out for significant further research (Hui, 2005: 18).

A final avenue of future research would pull open my posited intervening variables

(Warner and Walker, 2011: 119–125). I argued that the general theory of a cultural peace

find its contextualization in the Confucian (1644–1839) space as three intervening vari-

ables: (1) respect for the older and more educated, (2) social harmony, and (3) social

hierarchy. Together these limited the aggression of the ‘senior’ (China) and the preten-sions of the ‘junior’ (the Confucian periphery). At least two concerns arise: first, these

variables push far from the typical mechanisms of IR theory and rely heavily on the

secondary literature from religion and sociology. They are open to dispute, most obvi-

ously from a realist position that they are soft or simply cover up ‘real’ power relations

(‘comforting fictions’: Larsen, 2011; also Wade, 2011; Wang, 2011). Second, is there

anything analogous to these in Christendom (most especially) whose lack explains its

low peace score? My convenient Westernization was ‘feudalism that works,’ raising the

obvious question why it worked in Asia but not in Europe.

East Asia is a rich case in IR theory that is only recently receiving sustained theoretical

attention in the field. Various states such as Japan (Johnson, 1994) and South Korea

(Amsden, 1992), and now of course China (Kynge, 2006), have enjoyed a robust case

literature, frequently focusing on their remarkable growth, or in a journalistic vein. But

East Asia as a source for IR theory is a new moment in the discipline. IR theory is heavily

built on the European, and later transatlantic, experience after the Middle Ages. These

Eurocentric models — the state, balance of power, legalistic treaty-making, ‘interest’ —

have then been all-too-easily generalized to the whole planet and all history. This has led

to growing criticism in Asia, especially as the ‘cockpit’ of world politics increasingly drifts

from the North Atlantic area (Wohlforth et al., 2007; Mahbubani, 2008). Stretching our

theories and tests more widely across time and space is an obvious next step for IR to grow.

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Fund for Humanities & Social Studies at Pusan National

University, 2011. I would like to thank David Kang, David Leheny, David Lake, Stephan Haggard,

Joe Philips, and two EJIR reviewers for their helpful comments. Earlier versions of this paper were

presented to conferences at the China Foreign Affairs University in 2010 and the University of

Southern California in 2011. I am grateful to both institutions for their support and to the confer-

ence participants for their many insights.

Notes

1 Haas’s argument for a geriatric peace too fits the constructivist mold. It identifies the increas-

ing cultural choice of states in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development








to retrench from power competition for lifestyle reasons (Ash, 2009; Stephens, 2010). This is

wholly unanticipated by realism.

2 Hui (2005: 18ff.) helpfully distinguishes between a system of states and a society of states,

using Western Europe and East Asia as exemplars.

3 This is an extremely contentious point in Chinese historiography, as popular Chinese notions project an ‘imagined Chinese community’ as far back as the first Bronze Age Shang dynasty

(1500–1045 BC). Here, I follow convention on the start of ‘Imperial China’ with the Qin

(Dreyer, 2002; Hui, 2005).

4 Coding the Qing as a Chinese or Confucian dynasty is also hotly controversial in Chinese histori-

ography. The ‘new Qing history’ school emphasizes the multi-ethnic or multicultural nature of the

Qing empire (Crossley, 2002; Waley-Cohen, 2004). The Qing began as the Manchus, a non-Han

people to the north-east of the Chinese heartland, and their overthrow of the preceding Ming sparked

much hand-wringing, especially in Korea, over their likely ‘barbarism.’ As in note 3, however, I

accept the dominant view of the relevant historiography — in this case, that the Qing were in fact,

or rather became, a ‘genuine’ Chinese dynasty (Fairbank, 1968; Kang, 2008, 2010a; Loccoco, 2002;Spence, 1999). Certainly, the modern Chinese understand the Qing as yet another dynasty in their

long history. China, by this ‘new Qing history’ benchmark, has almost always been multicultural,

although certainly more so under the Qing. But despite the inclusion of non-Han peoples, including

the Manchus themselves, China was clearly the center of the new dynasty. Internal two-way sociali-

zation occurred, despite halting Manchu efforts to prevent it (Muramatsu, 1960: 267; Spence, 1999:

ch. 5), and the Manchus quickly adopted Confucian practices — including the exalted imperial role,

the ritual and investiture, and the tributary relationship with neighbors. Despite any angst in the

Confucian periphery, there is no evidence of Confucianist anti-Qing alliance behavior, nor any aid

to Ming pretenders. An EJIR reviewer noted: ‘The Qing also incorporated many of the ruling insti-

tutions and mindset of the previous Ming/etc. dynasties, and certainly adopted the same Confucian

norms and rhetoric as did previous dynasties. The Qing viewed themselves as having the Confucian

“mandate of heaven”, they kept the same Confucian emphasis on the literati and scholar-officials to

staff their ministries, and they certainly viewed themselves as interacting with other political entities

in a hierarchical manner.’ I am grateful for this critical feedback.

5 The following war dates come from Hornblower (2002).

6 The CoW data set runs from 1816 to the present; hence, it cannot be used for the other cases.

It finds no intra-Confucian wars during 1816–39.

7 Eight or even 17 war years appears low, because so much modern Middle Eastern conflict

does not fit a strict inter-Arab state war parameter. First, most of the intra-Arab League

conflicts were brief militarized interstate disputes, which CoW does not code as inter-state

war: the Moroccan–Algerian ‘Sand War’ of 1963, the Syrian mini-invasion of Jordan in1970, the Libya–Egyptian border war of 1977, and the Iraq–Kuwaiti border wars of 1973

and 1976. Also, the Syrian occupation of Lebanon after the 2000 Israeli withdrawal is not

coded. Second, Arab wars against non-Arabs are excluded — including the wars with Israel,

Ethiopia-Somalia, and the Iran–Iraq War. They do not violate the notion of an intra-Arab

peace, because Israel, Iran, and Ethiopia are not members of the Arab League. Third, the civil

wars in Arab League member states, including the Moroccan–Western Sahara conflict and

the intra-state wars in Yemen, Lebanon, Somalia, and Sudan, are not coded. The Arab League

defines the Western Sahara as a portion of Morocco. To recode for these would more than

quadruple the war years of the Arab system, given their protracted and stalemated character.

Duvall (1976) argues that the CoW underrates the incidence of war.

8 Hui (2005: 16): ‘When targets of domination exist in competitive isolation from one another,

it should not be very difficult for power seekers to subjugate them one after another.’

9 I thank Myung Ju Chung for this counter-argument.








Kelly 425

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Biographical note

Robert E. Kelly is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and

Diplomacy at the Pusan National University in South Korea. His interests focus on secu-

rity in East Asia, US foreign policy, and the international financial institutions. He has previously published in journals such as the Review of International Studies, the

International Studies Review, and Geopolitics.

Documents

2011 a 'Confucian Long Peace' in Pre-Western East Asia