Griffith Asia Institute - Research Seminar Series
‘From Interaction to Diversity:States, Empires and Company Sovereigns in the Indian Ocean, 1500-1750’
Presented by: Professor Jason Sharman, Centre for Governance and Public Policy, Griffith University and Dr Andrew Phillips, School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland.
This paper analyzes the international relations of the Indian Ocean region 1500-1750 to demonstrate how increased interaction produced a durable diversity of polity forms. This diversity undermines the conventional IR wisdom whereby realists, rationalists and constructivists appeal to mechanisms of military competition, rational emulation or normative socialization, respectively, in positing a strong association between increased interaction capacity and convergence on sovereign statehood. In contrast, the early modern Indian Ocean system constituted a heteronomous international order, with the dominant indigenous polities differing radically from sovereign states. The functional imperatives of long-distance trade between Europe and Asia compounded this diversity by spurring the birth of Company sovereigns, which combined features of sovereign states and private companies. The Company sovereigns’ expansion in Asia catalyzed a hybridization of polity forms via practices of adaptation and localization. This heteronomous regional order was succeeded not by a regional sovereign state system, but rather one of colonial empires.
Professor Jason Sharman graduated with his PhD in Political Science from the university of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1999, before going on to work at American University in Bulgaria and the University of Sydney. In 2007 he took up a position at Griffith University. Sharman is a former Director of the Centre for Governance and Public Policy and in 2012 he was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship. Sharman's research is currently focused on money laundering and tax havens, as well as sovereignty and empires. His seventh book, Global Shell Games, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.
Dr Andrew Phillips (PhD, Cornell) is a Discovery Early Career Research Award Fellow in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland. His research focuses on the global state system’s evolution from 1500 to the present, and on contemporary security challenges in East and South Asia, with a particular focus on Great Power rivalry and counter-terrorism. He is the author of War, Religion and Empire: The Transformation of International Orders (Cambridge, 2011, winner of the 2012 Crisp Prize from the Australian Political Science Association).
- Thursday 5 September 2013
- N72, Meeting Room -1.18, Nathan campus
- 12.30 – 1:50pm
A light lunch will be provided.
To RSVP, please contact Natasha Vary on (07) 3735 5322 or n.vary@griffith.edu.au by 5.00pm Monday 2 September 2013.
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RSVP on or before Monday 2 September 2013 , by email n.vary@griffith.edu.au , or by phone 37355322