Euro-centric diplomacy: Challenging but manageable

Drawing on the work of cultural anthropologists Clifford Geertz and Marshall Sahlins, I suggest a layered conceptualization of diplomacy as consisting of myths, sociabilities and practices which allows us to open the question of diplomacy’s Euro-centrism to empirical scrutiny. As do all known diplomatic systems, European diplomacy has its roots in the social systems of kinship and religion.

It is rooted in Christian mythology, and this mythology informs its sociabilities and practices. Three mini-case studies (of diplomatic immunity, permanent representation and the institution of dean of the corps diplomatique) demonstrate that this mythology shines through in present-day diplomacy as well. Since diplomatic practices bear the mark of a European cultural context, it privileges the life chances of those native to that context. In this sense, diplomacy is Euro-centric.

I then go on to argue that, empirically, this does not seem to be a particularly pressing problem. The real problem may be external to diplomacy itself, and concern the idea that European diplomacy was uniquely peaceful. As I demonstrate by means of a mini-study of Iroquois diplomacy, this is simply not the case. If the erroneous idea of uniquely peaceful European diplomacy is paired up with a framing of relations between European and non-European polities in terms of peaceful diplomacy, the result may easily be that we occlude other aspects of those relations, such as conquest and colonialization. The Euro-centrism of diplomacy that matters is thus less to do with diplomatic practices than with mnemonic practices about diplomacy.