When will the conference take place?

The conference is scheduled from February 19 to February 21.

Where is the conference being held?

The conference will be held in Bangkok, THA.

Treaties and Tributes: Asian Agency and Performativity in Cross-Cultural Diplomacy, c. 1400–1975 (2027 Conference)

Name: Treaties and Tributes: Asian Agency and Performativity in Cross-Cultural Diplomacy, c. 1400–1975 (2027 Conference)
Start: 2027-02-19T00:00:00Z
End: 2027-02-21T00:00:00Z
Location: Bangkok

Feb 19–21, 2027Bangkok, ThailandIn-person

Registration open

The 2027 conference, "Treaties and Tributes: Asian Agency and Performativity in Cross-Cultural Diplomacy, c. 1400–1975," will convene from February 19 to February 21 in Bangkok, Thailand. This event aims to re-evaluate historical diplomatic interactions involving Asian polities, moving beyond narratives that primarily emphasize European dominance. Instead, it seeks to highlight the active roles and strategic initiatives undertaken by Asian states and societies in shaping cross-cultural diplomacy over several centuries.

Committees & topics

Topics
Contact: First Encounters and the Opening of Cross-Cultural Diplomacy in Asia, c. 1400–1975 · Asian Norms and Practices of Tributary Relations, Treaty-Making and Diplomacy · Cross-Cultural Perceptions of Key Concepts in Inter-Polity Relations · Performative Aspects of Diplomacy: Ceremonies, Gifts, and Protocol · Interpersonal Relations and Emotions in Diplomacy and Treaty-Making · Sites of Diplomacy and the Role of Sensory Experiences · Commercial Aspects of Treaties and Tributary Relations · Religious Elements in Diplomacy and Inter-Polity Relations

Why it matters

This conference is significant for its focus on re-centering Asian perspectives in the study of historical diplomacy. Traditional accounts often portray Asian states as passive recipients of Western influence, particularly during the colonial and pre-colonial eras. By examining "treaties and tributes" through the lens of Asian agency and performativity, the conference challenges this Eurocentric bias.

It encourages scholars to explore how Asian polities actively negotiated, resisted, and adapted to external pressures, utilizing their own diplomatic traditions and cultural practices to achieve strategic objectives. This approach not only enriches our understanding of global history but also provides valuable insights into the enduring legacies of these interactions on contemporary international relations. The discussions will illuminate the complex and often nuanced ways in which power was exercised and perceived across different cultural contexts.

How to prepare

To effectively engage with the themes of this conference, participants should prepare by considering the diverse forms of diplomatic agency that existed outside of Western frameworks. This involves moving beyond a sole focus on formal treaties to include other performative aspects of diplomacy, such as tribute systems, ceremonial exchanges, and informal negotiations, which often carried significant political weight.

Attendees might find it beneficial to review the lesson on "engagement-strategies" to understand how different actors, including non-state entities, can influence diplomatic outcomes. Furthermore, the lesson on "dynamic-analysis" can provide a framework for dissecting the evolving power dynamics and strategic adaptations employed by Asian polities in their interactions with various external powers. Understanding these multifaceted approaches will be crucial for contributing to a more comprehensive and nuanced historical narrative.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 1 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Thailand

As the host nation, Thailand offers a rich historical context for examining Asian diplomatic agency, having navigated complex relationships with both regional powers and European colonial forces while largely maintaining its independence.

Role in topic

Thailand's historical experience, particularly its strategic diplomacy in balancing regional and external influences, provides a compelling case study for the conference's themes of agency and performativity in cross-cultural interactions.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Contact: First Encounters and the Opening of Cross-Cultural Diplomacy in Asia, c. 1400–1975

Between the early fifteenth century and the late twentieth, Asia was the site of repeated and often transformative episodes of inter-polity 'contact'—from the Ming treasure voyages under Zheng He (1405–1433), which projected Chinese imperial presence across the Indian Ocean, to the arrival of Portuguese, Dutch, English and later French agents at Asian courts from the sixteenth century onward. These encounters were rarely between blank slates: Asian polities such as Ming and Qing China, Joseon Korea, Tokugawa Japan, Ayutthaya, Mughal India, Safavid Iran and the Ottoman Empire already operated dense networks of envoys, interpreters, and protocols into which European newcomers had to insert themselves. The historiographical move away from a Eurocentric 'expansion of Europe' narrative has highlighted Asian agency in shaping the terms of contact. Local rulers decided whom to receive, where, and on what ceremonial footing; intermediaries—dragomans, compradors, missionaries, captive scribes—translated not only languages but categories of sovereignty, kinship, and obligation. Early modern contact zones such as Melaka, Nagasaki's Dejima, Canton, Batavia, Surat and Istanbul became laboratories for negotiating mutual recognition. By the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the legacies of these earlier contacts conditioned the so-called 'unequal treaties,' anti-colonial diplomacy, and eventually post-1945 reorderings culminating in events like the 1955 Bandung Conference and the diplomatic openings of the 1970s. The topic invites delegates to examine contact not as a single moment of arrival but as an ongoing, negotiated process in which Asian actors set much of the agenda.

Key players

Asian Norms and Practices of Tributary Relations, Treaty-Making and Diplomacy

Asian polities developed sophisticated and varied frameworks for managing relations among states long before the codification of European international law. The Sinic 'tribute system' radiating from the Ming and Qing courts organised relations with Korea, Vietnam, the Ryukyus, Siam and Inner Asian polities through ritualised missions, investiture of rulers, and the calendar of tribute, while also accommodating commerce and intelligence-gathering. Parallel systems operated in Mughal South Asia (through farmans, mansabdari ranks, and gift exchange), in the Ottoman world (ahdname capitulations), and in maritime Southeast Asia, where surat (letters) and bunga mas exchanges structured relations between Malay sultanates and overlords such as Ayutthaya. Recent scholarship has stressed that these systems were not static hierarchies but flexible repertoires. Smaller states often used tributary or vassal status strategically to secure trade access, legitimacy, or protection; great powers tolerated multiple, sometimes contradictory, framings of the same relationship. Treaty-making in Asia thus took many forms—oaths, written compacts in multiple languages, exchange of seals, marriage alliances—that did not map neatly onto the Westphalian template later imposed in the nineteenth century. The gradual encounter with European treaty practice, culminating in instruments such as the Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689), the Treaty of Nanjing (1842), and the Kanagawa Convention (1854), forced renegotiation of these norms, but Asian agents continued to mobilise older repertoires well into the twentieth century. The topic asks delegates to compare these norms and assess their afterlives in modern diplomacy.

Key players

Cross-Cultural Perceptions of Key Concepts in Inter-Polity Relations

Concepts such as sovereignty, equality, suzerainty, peace, friendship, and 'the foreign' carried different weights and connotations across Asian and European political traditions. Chinese notions of tianxia (all under Heaven) and the hua–yi distinction implied a graduated cosmological order rather than a society of equal sovereign states. Islamic juristic categories such as dar al-Islam and dar al-harb, modulated by Ottoman and Mughal practice, structured another framework. Sanskritic and Theravada Buddhist polities deployed concepts of cakravartin kingship and mandala overlordship, while Tokugawa Japan articulated its own 'Japan-centred' world order. Translation was never neutral. Terms like 'treaty,' 'ambassador,' 'tribute,' 'gift,' or 'sovereign' were rendered into Chinese, Persian, Malay, Japanese, Manchu, and Vietnamese with significant semantic slippage—slippage that diplomats on all sides could exploit. The nineteenth-century imposition of European international law through figures like W. A. P. Martin's Chinese translation of Wheaton (1864) and Japan's adoption of bankoku kōhō transformed but did not erase indigenous vocabularies. The topic invites delegates to interrogate how mutual (mis)understandings of such core concepts both enabled and constrained diplomacy, and how Asian actors actively reshaped imported categories to serve local political purposes well into the decolonisation era.

Key players

Performative Aspects of Diplomacy: Ceremonies, Gifts, and Protocol

Across early modern and modern Asia, diplomacy was inseparable from performance. Audiences at the Ming and Qing courts revolved around the choreography of the kowtow, the placement of envoys in relation to the throne, the colour and cut of robes, and the sequence of memorials and edicts. The Macartney mission of 1793 became iconic precisely because of its dispute over ritual prostration. Similar choreographies governed audiences at the Mughal darbar, the Topkapı Palace, the Tokugawa shogun's castle in Edo, the Joseon royal court, and the courts of Ayutthaya and Hue. Gifts were neither mere ornament nor disguised bribery. Within tributary frameworks, the symmetry of presented tribute and bestowed gifts encoded hierarchy and legitimacy; in inter-imperial contexts, items such as clocks, manuscripts, textiles, horses, elephants, jade, porcelain and firearms communicated technological prestige and cosmological claims. Protocol manuals—China's Da Qing huidian, Ottoman teşrifat registers, Tokugawa buke shohatto-related etiquette—codified these practices and were themselves objects of cross-cultural study. Recent scholarship treats such performances as substantive politics rather than surface decoration: contests over seating, language of address, the kissing of seals, or the offering of a single cup of tea could determine the success of a mission. The topic asks delegates to read ceremony, gift, and protocol as primary languages of inter-polity recognition.

Key players

Interpersonal Relations and Emotions in Diplomacy and Treaty-Making

Behind the formal documents of treaties and tribute lay dense webs of interpersonal relationships—friendships, patronage ties, rivalries, suspicions, even affection—between envoys, monarchs, interpreters, and households. Korean envoys to Beijing or Edo cultivated long-running literary correspondences with their counterparts; Jesuit advisers at the Ming, Qing, and Mughal courts built careers on personal trust with rulers such as the Kangxi Emperor or Akbar; Ottoman dragomans inherited posts across generations, embedding diplomacy in family networks. The history of emotions has shown that emotional registers—grief at a ruler's death, joyful reception of envoys, performed humility, righteous anger at perceived insult—were politically operative. Mourning embassies, congratulatory missions, and apology missions worked precisely because emotion was codified and legible across cultural lines, even when its sincerity was contested. Records such as Joseon yŏnhaengnok travel diaries, Ottoman sefâretnâme reports, and Qing memorials preserve these affective textures. At the same time, interpersonal diplomacy could fail catastrophically when trust broke down—across the Anglo-Burmese wars, the Opium Wars, or the late-colonial negotiations of the twentieth century. The topic invites delegates to consider emotion and interpersonal bonds as analytically serious dimensions of treaty-making rather than as soft background to 'real' interests.

Key players

Sites of Diplomacy and the Role of Sensory Experiences

Diplomacy in Asia unfolded in carefully chosen and curated sites: imperial audience halls such as Beijing's Taihe Dian, Edo Castle, the Mughal Diwan-i Khas, the Topkapı's Gate of Felicity, and the audience pavilions of Ayutthaya and Hue, as well as liminal spaces like Dejima, the Russian Orthodox mission in Beijing, the foreign factories at Canton, and caravanserais along the Silk Road. Each site choreographed bodies, sightlines, and access in politically meaningful ways. Sensory experience was integral. The scent of incense at temple-based oath-taking, the sound of court music marking the arrival of envoys, the taste of formal banquets, the visual splendour of robes, banners, and architecture, and the tactile experience of seals, silks, and ceremonial weapons all communicated power and recognition. Travel itself—the long overland routes to Beijing, sea voyages to Nagasaki, or steamship journeys to late-Qing or Meiji capitals—structured what envoys saw, smelled, and reported home. Material-cultural and spatial-history approaches have shown how rebuilding, relocating, or restricting these sites (for example, the Qing's management of foreign quarters or the post-1858 legation quarter in Beijing) was itself a diplomatic act. The topic asks delegates to read architecture, geography, and the senses as integral to inter-polity negotiation.

Key players

Commercial Aspects of Treaties and Tributary Relations

Asian tributary and treaty relations were rarely separable from commerce. The Ming and Qing tribute trade subsidised and regulated exchange in silk, porcelain, tea, silver, horses, and ginseng; the Ryukyuan and Korean missions to China were also major commercial events. The Ottoman ahdname capitulations granted to Venice, France, England and the Dutch combined diplomatic recognition with detailed customs arrangements. In maritime Asia, treaties with the Portuguese Estado da Índia, the Dutch VOC, and the English East India Company entangled sovereign recognition with monopolies, factory rights, and tariff schedules. The nineteenth-century 'unequal treaties'—Nanjing (1842), Tianjin (1858), Kanagawa (1854), Harris (1858), and the Bowring Treaty with Siam (1855)—made the commercial dimension explicit, fixing tariffs, opening treaty ports, and granting extraterritoriality. Yet Asian states often used commercial clauses creatively: Siam, Japan after the Meiji Restoration, and late-Qing reformers leveraged treaty commerce to fund modernisation and renegotiate terms by the early twentieth century. By 1975 the long arc of commercial diplomacy had been reshaped by decolonisation, the Bretton Woods order, and Cold War economic blocs, but its early modern roots remained legible in customs regimes, port cities, and trading diasporas. The topic invites delegates to examine how trade and treaty co-constituted Asian inter-polity relations.

Key players

Religious Elements in Diplomacy and Inter-Polity Relations

Religion permeated Asian diplomacy. Buddhist networks linked Tang, Song, Ming and Qing China with Korea, Japan, Tibet, Mongolia and mainland Southeast Asia; relic exchanges, monastic missions, and the patronage of monasteries were diplomatic acts. The Qing emperors' cultivation of the Dalai and Panchen Lamas, and the Tibetan-Mongol-Manchu religious order known as 'cho-yon' (patron-priest), structured Inner Asian politics for centuries. Islamic diplomacy connected the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires with sultanates in Southeast Asia—Aceh, Johor, Banten—through correspondence invoking the caliphate, pilgrimage diplomacy via the Hijaz, and the exchange of religious scholars. Christian missions—Jesuits at the Ming, Qing, Mughal and Tokugawa courts; later Protestant missionaries in the nineteenth century—operated simultaneously as religious agents and diplomatic intermediaries, sometimes welcomed (Matteo Ricci, Adam Schall), sometimes expelled (the Tokugawa proscription, the Chinese Rites Controversy's aftermath). Religion also shaped treaty content: oaths sworn on sacred texts, clauses on toleration or missionary access (notably in the Tianjin treaties), and the religious framing of sovereignty in nineteenth- and twentieth-century anti-colonial movements. By the mid-twentieth century, pan-Islamic, pan-Buddhist, and Christian internationalist currents continued to shape Asian diplomacy through forums like Bandung. The topic asks delegates to assess religion as a structuring rather than incidental dimension of inter-polity relations.

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for Treaties and Tributes: Asian Agency and Performativity in Cross-Cultural Diplomacy, c. 1400–1975 (2027 Conference).

Recent reporting to ground your prep

Foreign Minister: Bahrain’s membership in UNSC (2026 – 2027) affirms its diplomatic leadership and global role in promoting peace and sustainable development

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Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Gender Dynamics Across Cultures

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Cross-Cultural Communication

Multilateral Negotiation

Media & Press Relations

Advanced Negotiation

The states in play, with the data that shapes their stance

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Thailand February 2027

By committee

Frequently asked questions

Treaties and Tributes: Asian Agency and Performativity in Cross-Cultural Diplomacy, c. 1400–1975 (2027 Conference)

Feb 19–21, 2027Bangkok, ThailandIn-person

Registration open

Committees & topics

Topics
Contact: First Encounters and the Opening of Cross-Cultural Diplomacy in Asia, c. 1400–1975 · Asian Norms and Practices of Tributary Relations, Treaty-Making and Diplomacy · Cross-Cultural Perceptions of Key Concepts in Inter-Polity Relations · Performative Aspects of Diplomacy: Ceremonies, Gifts, and Protocol · Interpersonal Relations and Emotions in Diplomacy and Treaty-Making · Sites of Diplomacy and the Role of Sensory Experiences · Commercial Aspects of Treaties and Tributary Relations · Religious Elements in Diplomacy and Inter-Polity Relations

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 1 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Thailand

Role in topic

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Contact: First Encounters and the Opening of Cross-Cultural Diplomacy in Asia, c. 1400–1975

Key players

Asian Norms and Practices of Tributary Relations, Treaty-Making and Diplomacy

Key players

Cross-Cultural Perceptions of Key Concepts in Inter-Polity Relations

Key players

Performative Aspects of Diplomacy: Ceremonies, Gifts, and Protocol

Key players

Interpersonal Relations and Emotions in Diplomacy and Treaty-Making

Key players

Sites of Diplomacy and the Role of Sensory Experiences

Key players

Commercial Aspects of Treaties and Tributary Relations

Key players

Religious Elements in Diplomacy and Inter-Polity Relations

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for Treaties and Tributes: Asian Agency and Performativity in Cross-Cultural Diplomacy, c. 1400–1975 (2027 Conference).

Recent reporting to ground your prep

Foreign Minister: Bahrain’s membership in UNSC (2026 – 2027) affirms its diplomatic leadership and global role in promoting peace and sustainable development

Turkish president says Ankara to gain global diplomatic prominence with NATO, Turkic summits

Israel’s Flotilla Detentions Trigger Cost

Israel Flotilla Detentions Cause Diplomatic T

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Gender Dynamics Across Cultures

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Cross-Cultural Communication

Multilateral Negotiation

Media & Press Relations

Advanced Negotiation

The states in play, with the data that shapes their stance

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Thailand February 2027

By committee

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

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Frequently asked questions

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

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Frequently asked questions