ANCIENT NEAR EAST (CA. 1600 1200 B.C.E.): INTERNATIONAL HISTORY MEETS IR THEORY ALEX AISSAOUI (PH.D. CANDIDATE) University of Helsinki Paper prepared for XXII ND WORLD CONGRESS OF POLITICAL SCIENCE RESHAPING POWER, SHIFTING BOUNDARIES MADRID, SPAIN JUNE 8 12, 2013
The aim of the paper is twofold: a) to analyze how far back in time can there be said to have existed an international states-system and b) to demonstrate that at the beginning of the 21st century there's still a need to make a better use of international history in the theory building of the IR research. While anarchy has become common currency in IR theory to depict the structural state of nature of interstate relations where there s no supreme authority above states to guarantee their security needs, the question of how far back in time can we actually see an anarchical system divides the research community. Classical and modern thinkers have dealt this matter from a mainly Western point of view ever since Thucydides. Yet this paper argues that at least over 1000 years before Thucydides description of the rivalry among ancient Greeks and that of the Warring States Period in China, we find in the Late Bronze Age Near East (1600-1200 B.C.E.) elements of anarchy that were similar and in many ways more cosmopolitan than what the more homogenous, posterior and culturally restricted Sino-Hellenic environment show us. Diplomacy, alliances, balance of power, concern for honor, trade, and even a pre-modern conception of diplomatic immunity were all part of the systemic interaction of the Near Eastern polities. Central argument of the paper is, then, that insufficient thought has so far been given to this important phase in international history within political science. Key words international states-system international history anarchical system Late Bronze Age diplomacy balance of power honor trade diplomatic immunity systemic interaction 1 INTRODUCTION: PUTTING THE STUDY OF THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST ON A MAP A British historian G. Lowes Dickinson introduced the concept of anarchy 1 to the modern scholarship of International Relations through his works of The European Anarchy (1916) and The International Anarchy 1904 1914 (1926). In them he argued that the anarchical structure of the European pre-war states-system with its offensive armaments policy and secret diplomacy was the main cause for the outbreak of the First World War (see Dickinson 1917/1926: 6, 13 4, 16, 27, 42, 59 60, 71, 96 8, 105, 128 29, 144/24 5, 36, 46 7). More recently, in the Realist tradition, Kenneth Waltz (1979: 47 8) has elaborated vastly on the question of anarchy although his somewhat ahistorical, Eurocentric and parsimonious approach has afterwards received a lot of criticism (see e.g. Buzan and Little 1996/2000/2010: 405 06, 411, 413/35/204, 213; Schroeder 1994: 110, 113 48). The aim of this paper is to tackle the questions of how far in history is it feasible to go and under what conditions in order to find an international environment conducive to bring about those facets of world politics we find familiar in our contemporary world. The idea, however, is not to try to find similarities in the inter-state relations per se and make the realist claim that there are nomothetic-like laws at work behind the functioning of states-systems as if the nature of word politics was a sort of repetition (criticism against this line of argument, see e.g. Buzan and Little 2000/2001: 19/24 8; Schroeder 1997: 71 3; see also Wight 1966: 26, 33). Rather, the purpose is to bring the ancient Mediterranean world beyond the Greco- Roman period more firmly in the research agenda of international relations, and thus to give a new reading to the way we analyse the meaning and significance of the classical world in IR theory. This necessitates a more systematic use of history which remains somewhat 1 Anarchy is of course one of those concepts that has a relatively long conceptual history in the European political thought starting from the 16 th century onwards, and including thinkers such as Jean Bodin, Thomas Hobbes, Immanuel Kant, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (see e.g. Aiko 2006: 96 120; Boucher 2006: 156 177; Derathé 1995: 94, 382, 125 8, 147, 382; Keene 2006: 233 52; McMillan 2006: 52 73; Williams 2005: 253 76). 1
underdeveloped within the discipline of international relations (for literature dealing with the problematic nature and lack of dialogue between history and political science, see Eckstein 2 2006: 7 10; Harber, Kennedy and Krasner 1997: 34 43; Hoffmann 1995: 237 38; Jervis 2001: 385, 392, 400 1; Lauren 1979: 9 10; Levy 1997/2001: 22 33/40 1, 45, 49 50, 59, 81 2; Quirk 2008: 520 1). History s role in IR theory will be dealt more closely in the second section of the paper. The story of the ancient Near Eastern world during the Late Bronze Age (LBA) (ca. 1600 1200 BCE) is yet to be fully told within political science. In a larger sense, the ancient Near Eastern civilization is to this day overshadowed by the Greco-Roman world (see e.g. Kuhrt 2006: 55 64) into which IR scholars have looked in an effort to locate the roots of inter-state interaction (see e.g. Evans and Newnham 1998: 42 3; Jackson 2005: 5, 14; Jahn 2006: 1, 3, 18; Monoson and Loriaux 2006: 27 51; Levy and Thompson 2010: 38 43). In spite of this, modern Western societies owe much to the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean Basin and the Near East. They provided the foundation for agriculture, cities, states, writing, laws, literature, mathematics, astrology, calendar, and even a rudimentary banking system (e.g. Hallo 1996: 324 32; Maier 2006; Whitehouse 2006). This lack of dialogue between disciplines is also related to the somewhat rigid barriers in the academia where different fields of study don t necessarily sufficiently meet (see e.g. Levy 2001: 30; Warleigh 2006: 31 2, 34, 41). Although there have been scholarly studies within the field of IR on the ancient Near East, no thorough systematic analysis has so far been done concerning the topic. Yet the LBA Near East matters for a student of world politics. In fact, the ancient Near East was often more cosmopolitan and diverse than what the more homogenous, posterior and culturally restricted Sino-Hellenic Greek city-state polis system so vividly described by Thucydides and that of the Warring States Period in China show us (for a comparative perspective, see especially Cohen 1999: 3 16; also Holsti 1992: 17 35; Walker 1953: 75, 82, 99; Xu 2011: 203 04). The cosmopolitanism became evident at the beginning of the second millennium when Akkadian in its Babylonian form was adopted as the international language of diplomacy of the Near Eastern polities (see Bryce 2003: 13 14). It is against this kind of lacuna in research where there is still a tendency in international theory to consider the Greek city-state system as the international arena where we see the makings of a nascent international society that this paper aims to address (see Little 2005: 54; see also Giddens 1985: 4). As indicated above, at the centre of this paper is the question of how far can there be said to have existed an international states-system (on this question, see Buzan 1993: 332; Buzan and Little 1994: 233; Luard 1992: 342). At this point, however, it should be mentioned that this is a different question than the one addressing the very beginnings of international relations 3, which in any case is difficult to date in an exact fashion to a specific period in history more than likely the questions of war and peace were present in the prehistoric world (on this problematic topic, see e.g. Gat 2006: 11 35; Keeley 1996; LeBlanc 2003: 100 27, 228 30; 2 Eckstein s work is noteworthy in the sense that it is a rare example of a truly interdisciplinary work where the author is addressing both political scientists and historians studying the ancient Rome. 3 Raymond Cohen and Raymond Westbrook edited (2000) an insightful book on the ancient Near East called Amarna Diplomacy: The Beginnings of International Relations. Although a valuable comparative analysis of the way the ancient polities interacted with one another in Western Asia during the 14 th century, it is something of an exaggeration to say that the roots of international relations can be traced to this phase in international history (see e.g. Liverani s (2001: 2) take on this). 2
Numelin 1945: 8 9; Wright 1942: 33 5, 471 78, 527 59, 569 70). Whereas the precivilization prehistory is beyond the scope of this essay, there s no denying that in IR theory the states-system analysis has largely been addressed in post-westphalian 4 Eurocentric context (see e.g. Bull 1984: 117 26; James 1993: 277; Jones 104 26; Luard 1990; Wight 1977). Partly, this state of affairs has to be understood in the way the international system imposed by the Europeans became world-wide between the 16 th and 19 th centuries CE (see e.g. Bozeman 1960: ch. 13; Flynn and Giráldez 2006: 236 45; Kennedy 1989: 20 38; McNeill 1991: 565 7, 570 82, 598 9; Parry 1961: 47 59; Wallerstein 2011: 300 45; Watson 1992: 201 09). Notable exceptions to this, in recent years, especially include the writings of Barry Buzan, Raymond Cohen, Richard Little, Adam Watson, David Wilkinson (2004), and William C. Wohlforth, which will be dealt in the paper. Out of these, Raymond Cohen s who is a political scientist contribution (1996, 1999, 2000, 2001) marks out as perhaps the most serious attempt to bring the Late Bronze Age world in Western Asia to the research agenda of IR. Noteworthy earlier analyses on the topic also include Adda B. Bozeman s (1960: 17 36) book Politics and Culture in International History and Ragnar Numelin s work The Beginnings of Diplomacy: a sociological study of intertribal and international relations (1950). The latter treatise, in particular, seems to be one of the earliest studies in social sciences on the subject matter. By and large, it is fair to say, the general tendency in the IR scholarship has been either to ignore or consider the ancient Near East from an anecdotal 5 point of view. At the very start, a word of caution is in order: reconstructions of events are often difficult to make and they draw largely on hypotheses. This is because the study of ancient documents do not open up easily to interpretations as information is in many cases fragmentary and rhetorical (on this problematic, see e.g. Liverani 2000: 17; Milano 2006: 1229). Even for specialists, it is sometimes difficult not to take ancient texts at a face value. A classic example of this is the way Herbert Butterfield (1970: 357 58), a British historian and a first generation scholar of the English School, dismissed few decades ago the significance of the Amarna letters on the grounds that they no doubt deserve their fame; but one can brood over them at dead of night without finding a trace of the diplomatic craft, though there were occasions when diplomacy was sorely needed they would resort to straight bleating or begging, would withhold the return gift, or would detain the unfortunate messenger, perhaps for years. 4 Andreas Osiander (2001: 259 60, 262, 264 6) has made a convincing case by showing that the Peace of Westphalia instead of being a decisive moment in international history is, at least partially, a myth. It was not essentially fought because of Habsburg empire s quest for hegemony in Europe but because other monarchs, mainly France and Sweden, sought aggrandizement against the Habsburg dynasty at a moment when the empire was attempting to bring about a religious unity within its borders under the fervent Catholic king Ferdinand II (Bonney 2002: 12, 16). In addition to this, Peter H. Wilson (2009: 8, 751 54), a historian, makes rightfully the point that the development of the Westhphalian international order based on sovereignty was a long process, beginning well before 1648 and continuing long after. Osiander s article is an important effort to engage IR researchers and historians to have a dialogue on the causes and significance of the Thirty Years War. 5 It is revealing for instance that Adam Watson (1992: 31 2) refers to the Amarna diplomacy with a sole footnote and erroneously mentions Aramaic as the diplomatic language of the region during the second millennium instead of Babylonian. Barry Buzan and Richard Little (2000: 167 82, 209 10) on the other hand, despite their vast chronological coverage in International Systems in World History, only vaguely allude to the existence of complex alliance system in the ancient Near East. 3
It is true that we cannot speak of a genuine conference diplomacy although it is worth reminding that the age of summit diplomacy does not really start before the 20 th century CE, for the available evidence does not indicate that there ever were any summit-like meetings between the Great Kings although in the Amarna letters one can find few invitations between royals and quite possible preparations made for such a meeting take place (see Bryce 2003: 78 82; EA 6 3: 18 19, 27 9). The reasons for this were most likely linked to the transportation technology of the age which made long distance travelling somewhat dangerous and time consuming (see Jönsson 2000: 203; Liverani 2000: 22 23). In addition, diplomatic immunity was in many cases flagrantly violated a recurring theme in the Amarna correspondence (see e.g. Oller 1995: 1467). Nevertheless, states were in constant diplomatic contact with each other, although, admittedly, there was not a permanent representation which is the hallmark of modern diplomacy and yet even this is not a clear-cut issue as will be later shown. If we approach the diplomatic correspondence of the ancient world from a strictly limited modern eye, emphasizing in this case the inviolability of diplomatic community, no doubt these documents may seem crude, unsophisticated and even irrelevant. Yet, under closer scrutiny, we can find clear landmarks of diplomatic craft in the making. Another factor that perhaps explains why most students of world politics have avoided seriously studying the ancient Near Eastern world is related to the absence of a familiar conceptual framework of the discipline. 7 An elementary IR term like diplomacy does not emerge in the ancient documents even in the Greco-Roman world, let alone in the ancient Near East. The first recorded use of the English word diplomacy, which itself originates from the French term diplômes 8 or written acts of sovereigns, dates back to 1796 (see e.g. Numelin 1950: 125 26). The same is true of the expression great power, which became a colloquial term only after the Napoleonic Wars. The term was first used in its modern sense in the negotiations leading to the Congress of Vienna and more precisely in the correspondence of the British Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh who described it in a letter in 1814 (Webster 1921: 88, 307; see also Rothstein s (1968: 12 13) take on the formalization of the categories of great and small powers). Also a classical concept in international relations theory like balance of power was unknown to the ancients: we don t have sources that would explicitly mention power balancing although Polybius did describe the logics of balancing behaviour in his writings nor do we find empire or imperialism, which are part of common vocabulary in modern parlance (see Kemp 1978: 7; Levy and Thompson 2010: 39; Little 1989: 88; Pettinato 1991: 69; Polybius 1922: 226 27). However, in the words of one Near Eastern scholar is it necessary to conceptualize diplomacy to make diplomacy? (Lafont 2001: 41; on the use of the term balance of power in the ancient Near East, see David 2000: 61 2). That is to say, what matters here essentially is the actual political behaviour whether imperialistic, diplomatic, or based on the motivations of power balancing of the players involved, not the theoretical abstractions around which to build a reality. One 6 In what follows, I will refer to Amarna letters by the standard abbreviation of EA which is a common practice in the scholarly literature for studying this ancient primary source material for which I will use William Moran s translated edition (for a brief background analysis on the Amarna letters, see Moran 1992: xiv xxxviii). 7 Illustrative of this state of affairs is the fact that the very constitutive terminology for the discipline of world politics international relations became possible when the word international was coined by Jeremy Bentham in 1781 to give a more accurate rendering of the Latin phrase ius gentium or law of nations (see Bentham 1781: 10, 236; also Evans and Newnham 1998: 259). 8 The origin of the French term derives from the Latin word diploma meaning an official document. 4
way to overcome these difficulties is to look at the diplomatic correspondence and the treaties signed between independent political communities, which give us a valuable clue as to the way the states-system functioned, what were the questions of war and peace, trade relations, power hierarchy to cite just few examples. It is somewhat striking to notice the way scholars with different academic backgrounds approach these conceptual questions. Specialists 9 in the academic fields studying the ancient Near East use almost in a carefree fashion terms like a) club of the great powers, b) political system, c) balance of power, d) international system, and e) international equilibrium. The above terms are colloquial in the discipline of IR yet it is still a matter of dispute among the students of world politics whether we can, for instance, talk about power balancing in the ancient world (see e.g. Bull 2002: 101; Butterfield 1966: 133; Griffiths, O Callaghan and Roach 2007: 19; Sheehan 1996: 7). Another stumbling block for IR scholars seems to be what to make of state in the ancient context. Yet some scholars have started to recognize the need to go beyond the analysis focusing on the birth of the modern state, for international history clearly shows us the existence of organized political units that were unmistakeably autonomous and independent although, of course, not sovereign nation-states (for a literature addressing this question, see Dunne 2001: 227; Melko 1995: 34; Watson 1990: 100). During the Amarna period, as well as way before that, we see territorial states, city-states, and, independent states, that fell in-between the first two, all interact closely in the international area of Western Asia (see e.g. Goren, Bunimovits, Finkelstein & Na aman 2003; Parpola 2003: 1052). Consequently, if there are too rigid conceptual definitional lines, then important parts of what constitutes international history simply and quite unnecessarily disappear from the radar screen of international relations and with it the beneficial dialogue between IR theory and history (see the argument put forth by Buzan and Little 2000: 3, 18 34, 407 08). This paper will not focus on the entire chronology of the LBA Near East. Attention will rather be paid to the 14 th and 13 th centuries, which offer an interesting environment for the study of inter-state relations in the region. Before entering this arena, however, the idea in the second part is to elaborate the problematic relationship between political science and the study of ancient past. The third section of the essay analyses what were the precedents for the formation of this kind of international arena. In the fourth part, a close look will be given to the so called Amarna period (ca. 1365 1330 BCE), which was marked by the rather complex system of alliances and diplomatic activity between the regional political entities. The fifth section will focus on the international treaties the Near Eastern polities signed with one another. Finally, a short glimpse into the reasons that put a relatively quick end to the statessystem will be exposed. It should be noted that the word end has a somewhat rhetorical meaning to it: the interaction between different actors did not come to an end as such, of course. Instead the power tended to concentrate in the hands of fewer great states. The main thrust of the treatise, however, is to explain how the international system functioned before this power change took place. Before moving on to the second section, a brief analysis of two key concepts will follow. 9 See a) Tadmor 1979: 3 who coined the term in the Near Eastern context; b) e.g. Liverani 2004: 71, 100, 127 9, 130, 132; c) e.g. Van De Mieroop 2010: 234, Van Dijk 2000: 270; d) Cooper 2003: 241, Parpola 2003: 1051; e) Charpin 2006: 819. 5
Expressions international system of states and international society of states have appeared several times above. These concepts constitute a key element of this paper insofar as they offer the theoretical framework through which we can analyse and assess the level of sophistication of the interaction between polities in the LBA Near East. Historically, international system started to develop as a term in the European political thought during the 17 th and 18 th centuries AD. An early elaboration on the system of states was made by Samuel Pufendorf whose treatise De systematibus civitatum was published in 1668. Pufendorf, however, approached the term from rather limited premises, addressing mainly particular groups of states such as the Holy Roman Empire, Dutch and Swiss Confederations within the European states-system instead of treating it as a whole (see Bull 2002: 12; Seidler 2007; Wight 1977: 21 46). The modern connotation 10 started to emerge a century later in the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Friedrich Gentz and A. H. L. Heeren. Gentz and Heeren in particular contributed to the use of states-system as they described the way the system collapsed as a result of power balancing failure during the Napoleonic Wars (see Bull 2002: 12; Gentz 1809: 258 62; Gulick 1967: 31 4, 36; Heeren 1829: 13; Luard 1992: 18 19). The etymology of the expression international society is similarly of a relatively recent abstraction: it dates back to 1736 when a French diplomatic official Antoine Pecquet talked about a type of independent society (see Frey and Frey 1999: 213; Keens-Soper 1973: 505). By independent society Pecquet referred, however, to the diplomatic corps rather than to the collective entity of states as a whole. Yet for Pecquet the independent society that constituted the diplomatic class was a reflection of the diplomatic society of Europe s sovereigns. What set the conditions for this feeling of solidarity was the relative rise of secularism and the demise of confessional politics witnessed during the course of the 18 th century (see e.g. Anderson 1993; Frey and Frey 1999: 213; Kennedy 1989: 46, 94). This brief conceptual history shows that several key concepts that form the basis of the study of world politics have found their first theoretical expression in the European political philosophy. Yet we have to make a distinction between the conceptual history and the international history for statessystems and international societies their end points between political communities have existed before the very terms were coined, although admittedly in Europe. The important question here is not really whether, in Western Asia during the Amarna period or any other period before the first millennium, there were necessary elements to qualify any of the actors in one or the other category. Probably the systemic and societal features were overlapping as they do in the contemporary world. What matters is that we can indeed find at least some ingredients that help us label the international arena as system-like. Essentially, this means that there had to be diplomatic representation of sorts, trade relations, alliance treaties, wars and periods of peace. A crucial factor creating the conditions for a functional international system in the region was power balancing the same way as brotherhood between Great Kings illustrated an attempt to form an inclusive community to move away from a strictly systemic logic (in contrast to the more exclusive Chinese system, see Navari 2009: 44 5; Wight 1977: 32). Yet it is clearly more challenging to speak about international society in the ancient world where there really was not common ideologies like capitalism, socialism, or democracy that have made their mark on our modern world this was more or less true in 10 The term states-system made its first apparition in English in the translation of Heeren s Handbuch der Geschichte des Europäischen Staatensystems und seiner Kolonien (1809) that was published in 1829. 6
the classical antiquity as well (see Goldsworthy s (2006: 360) argument on the reasons of civil war between Caesar and Pompey in the first century BCE Rome). In the IR literature international system and international society are most instances associated with the writings of Hedley Bull. According to Bull s (2002: 13; Bull and Watson 1984: 1) definition an international society is a group of states or independent political communities which have established by dialogue and consent common rules and institutions for the conduct of their relations, and recognize their common interest in maintaining these arrangements. In Bull s view the difference between international society and international system is that in the latter states are in regular contact with one another, and where in addition there is interaction between them sufficient to make the behavior of each a necessary element in the calculations of the other (Bull 2002: 9 10). Thus, in the systemic side of the pendulum an inter-subjective agreement with its shared norms, rules and institutions among the actors is missing, the focus being mainly on the interaction alone (Buzan 2001: 476 77; Little 2000: 408 09). Yet interestingly, Bull (2002: 10, 39) recognizes that the interaction may be either direct (rivalry or partnership between neighbors) or indirect (mutual dealings through a third party). In the Near East during the Amarna period this interaction certainly took both forms. By and large, however, Bull (2002: 39) did not seem to be able to make up his mind as to in what exact way were the international system and society part of each other. Consequently, IR scholars have rightly criticized Bull s conceptual categorization as too rigid for when there is a system, there are inevitably elements or seeds of society such as communication and diplomacy but also as too Eurocentric and historically narrow, linking as he did these two concepts to the birth of the modern state (see Dunne 2001: 225 27; Hoffmann 1990: 24 6; James 1993: 272 76); Miller 1990: 70 9, 86). The contribution Hedley Bull made to the conceptual analysis lies in the fact that he brought system and society problematic more explicitly in the international relations research agenda than had been the case before, although the theoretical roots of this analysis go back at least to the early modern Europe (see Bull 2002: 12; Wight 1966: 17 34). What has not been contested, however, is Hedley Bull s distinction between international system and international society, which are useful concepts for analysis and transhistorical in nature, the same way as the balance of power theory. In the contemporary world certain institutions, mainly the European Union, the North-Atlantic Treaty Organization, G-8 and G-24, and the UN s Security Council pass as modern examples of international societies and great powers clubs on a regional and global level. These were obviously lacking in the Near East during the second millennium. However, the urge to be addressed and accepted as brother by fellow Great Kings was most probably the closest thing we can characterize as constituting international society in that distant context in time. This matter will be dealt more closely in the third, fourth and fifth section. 2 THE ENGLISH SCHOOL AND THE PROBLEM OF HISTORY This is not the proper venue to tackle in a profound manner the problematic relationship between international history and the study of International Relations. Nevertheless, a brief analysis is in order when addressing an international arena dating back to millennia. 7
There has been a growing literature in recent years among IR scholars and some historians who have pondered ways in which to create a more meaningful synergy between the two disciplines, which in the words of one American scholar (Levy 1997: 33): are too important to leave to the other. Too often the urge to appear scientific has been in the way of conveying the message in clear and pertinent fashion. This explains Joseph Nye s from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard recent statements and overall criticism that the statistical techniques too often determine what kind of research political scientists do, pushing them further into narrow specializations at the expense of being relevant (see Nye 2008: 658 and Shapiro 2002: 601, 605). The key seems to be that historically-minded political scientists should have the courage to use historical narrative in a methodical way in their research projects without being labeled as mere chroniclers. Older generation of IR scholars were very much conscious of this state of affairs. Among them, Hans Morgenthau who did not approve the excessive ahistorical abstractions within the discipline (see Morgenthau: 1995: 40) and Stanley Hoffmann, Harvard professor of political science, also shared this view in his classic essay, An American Social Science: International Relations. Hoffmann is not only critical of the presentist agenda but also of the lack of interest in the study of past imperial systems and of systems of interstate relations outside Europe in order to better grasp what is unique and what is recurrent in our own contemporary world (Hoffmann, 1995: 237 8). Although IR theorists are increasingly aware of the benefits of world historical approach, a general tendency within the discipline is to be somewhat dismissive of ancient history and to consider the last 500 years as sufficient to analyse balancing behavior (Eilstrup- Sangiovanni 2009: 370). The big question behind all this is, obviously, to what extent does the analytical scrutiny of the past contribute to the theory building within IR research. There have been several answers to this matter. Hedley Bull (1995: 182 3) a prominent figure from the first generation of English School scholars captured the crucial meaning of the problematic when he stated that historical study is essential also because any international political situation is located in time, and to understand it we must know its place in a temporal sequence of events. The use of historical material is not unproblematic, however. In order to really get to the heart of the matter, scholars in the field of IR should approach more systematically historical research made available by historians rather than lean on other writers of their own discipline. There are several examples where IR scholars simply ignore the historical material available for the subject matter under analysis: a case in point Buzan and Wohlworth s article on the balance of power theory (e.g. Buzan 2010: 7). While Mette Eilstrup-Sangiovanni s (2009: 347 48, 369 71) critical claim according to which the last 500 years of European history are sufficient for the analysis of balance of power theory is Eurocentric and methodologically limited, it does raise relevant questions on the usefulness of world historical approach. Too often, it seems, IR scholars underuse historical sources and lean on scholarship advanced within the field of world politics rather take advantage of historical research (on the problematic way of analyzing historical topics, see e.g. Buzan 2010). The end result of this all is that the IR community is mostly writing to each other which applies in most cases to historians as well instead of trying to create a genuinely cross-disciplinary dialogue. We should not, however, approach the question only from the point of view of what s in it for us but rather in what way the study of world politics can contribute to the study of history. Paul Schroeder, American historian, has captured well the delicate balance between the two disciplines by stating that IR theory can help historians avoid naïve empiricism; help 8
them see repetitive patterns and substantive analogies where they might otherwise have seen only unique particular circumstances. The English School of International Relations has been most serious about using historical material as a tool kit for the theory building. Yet even within this IR tradition there has been uncertainty in the writings of the school about finding the right balance between nomothetic and idiographic approach and about the precise nature of historical knowledge (see Bull 2000a: 253; Suganami 2006: 86 7). 3 NEAR EASTERN POLITIES BEFORE THE LATE BRONZE AGE The general chronology of the history of ancient Near East is not unproblematic. There is some controversy as to which type of dating system High, Middle or Low chronology to use. In the case of dating the Late Bronze Age, following periodization has been used in the literature: 1600 1200 (high), 1550 1150 (middle), 1500 1100 (low). Nowadays, historians usually resort to Middle Chronology although lower chronologies are increasingly gaining ground among scholars (see Collins 2008: 10 13; Kuhrt 1997: 11 12, 317; Sasson 1995). In this article, where possible, I will use the Low Chronology although not exclusively because there s a growing consensus that it is most in accordance with archaeological and textual evidence. It should be clear, however, that the chronology of ancient history is inherently approximate, not absolute, in nature (on the problems of chronology, see e.g. Astour 1989: 1 5; Giles 1997: 5, 81). Finally, when I use expressions such as third, second or first millennium, I m obviously referring to time periods before the Common Era. In the aftermath of the excitement of discovering the Amarna letter collection there was a tendency among specialists to consider this ancient primary source material as exceptional. Not so anymore. The findings of the Hittite archives in Boghazköy (1906 07) and the archives of Ugarit in Syria (1951 7) have changed the picture significantly (see e.g. Beckman 2003: 754; Lafont 2001: 40 1). In addition, the French and Italian archeologists have revealed in the 1930 s and 1960s and 1970s older international periods known as Mari and Ebla age respectively, the latter of which dates back the inter-state relations to the 24 th century BCE (see e.g. Cohen 1999: 3; Liverani 2001: 1 2; Michalowski 1993: 12; Pettati 1991: 9, 38 64). These discoveries matter in the sense that they give us perspective and challenge the idea that somehow there was a decisive moment or a landmark at a certain point in time to mark the beginnings of inter-state relations; this is not, of course, unrelated to the Westphalian myth question (see note 5). Even though there are certain limits to this logic for we must have some criteria for making distinctions and demarcating lines such as prehistory vs. history, nevertheless, international history is about an incessant dialogue between change and continuity. Historical narratives on the ancient Near East usually start around 3000 BCE, which coincide with the birth of writing. This marks the beginning of the Bronze Age by which time we can already see developed societies throughout the region from Egypt to Mesopotamia and starting from the third millennium in the Levant, Iran and further east outside the Near East. The appearance of writing is of particular interest not only for the historians but also for a student of world politics since historical records 11 form the foundation for a serious study of 11 Yet we should be careful not to dismiss the pre-historic phase of human past altogether. The well-known realist axiom according to which the state makes war and war makes the state puts too much emphasis on the 9
international systems (see Buzan and Little 1994: 237 39). The motives behind writing are also interesting insofar as they relate to the formation of inter-state relations: a written letter had clear advantages over an oral message for this made it possible to avoid problems with memory or a temptation by the messenger to distort the contents of the missive in order to please the receiver. 12 These facts were not missed by the classical authors (on the benefits of writing, see Thucydides 1950: 7.8). Nevertheless, we should not forget writing was a process that only in the first millennium started to become significantly more widespread, and it is still open to a debate to what extent it actually contributed to the state-formation although it was clearly an enabling factor with the coming of an administrative bureaucracy in the ancient Near East (see Charpin 2010: 247; Larsen 1995: 183). Even though several hundreds of thousands 13 of cuneiform tablets have been excavated from the region, only a relatively small number actually give us an idea on the way the international relations were conducted, most of these being administrative texts. However, this state of affairs can also be attributed to other epochs in the classical world: it has been estimated that only around one per cent of the Greco-Roman literature has survived to posterity, the commonest form of writing being the letter of recommendation instead of the diplomatic correspondence (see Goldsworthy 2006/2009: 5/45). It should be clear by now that the internationalization of the Near Eastern diplomacy goes back to some thousand years before the Late Bronze Age. Tens of thousands of cuneiform tablets predating the LBA have been recovered in northern Syria. These findings of Ebla (Tell Mardikh, some 40 miles south of Aleppo) and Mari 14 (Tell Hariri on the western bank of Euphrates river) age in the 24th and 18th century BCE respectively indicate that there existed well before a relatively sophisticated regional interaction between rival city-states which in turn led to an intense diplomatic activity with all the implications that logically came with it: international trade, alliances, war, and mini-empires (see Catagnoti 2003: 227 39; Charpin et Ziegler 2003: 1 2, 169, 206, 214 15, 242 45; Cooper 2003: 242; Liverani 2000: 15; Munnentity of modern state as an agent and instigator of war. In recent research, there has been an increasing awareness of the fact that organized violence did exist among hunter-gatherers dating back to pre-historic times thus rejecting the Rousseauite view of seeing war as a recent invention and a by-product of modern societies with its corrupting effects on man (see Gat 2006: 11 12, 13, 16, 25, 30, 35, 663; James 1986b: 466; Keeley 1996: 6 7, 179 180; LeBlanc 2004: 12 13, 22, 114 115, 120 123, 127, 228, 230; Numelin 1945: 8, 67 8; Tilly 1985: 181 83). 12 In the treaty (signed in the early 14 th century BCE) between Tudhaliya II of Hatti and Sunashshura of Kizzuwatna (located in the south-eastern Anatolia), Tudhaliya, the Hittite king, urges the Sunashshura to pay attention to the words of the messenger as they should be in accordance with the words of the tablet (see Beckman 1999: 5, 24; on the historical context of the treaty, see Bryce 2005: 139, 427 8 n. 60). 13 All in all, historians of the ancient Mesopotamia continue to be overwhelmed in the face of primary sources, the clay tablets millions of which have possibly survived; so far, around half a million tablets have been excavated (see Charpin 2010: 247; Charpin et Ziegler 2003: 27; Michalowski 1993: 1 2; Podany 2010: 11). 14 The best-known figure of the Mari Age is undoubtedly King Hammurabi (1792 1752 BCE) of Babylon who was famous for his law code although among modern scholars there s a growing consensus that it was not so much a code of law but rather a monument to prop up Hammurabi s prestige as a ruler (Van De Mieroop 2004: 106 7; see also Kuhrt 1997: 107). It was during the Mari Age (18th century BCE) that we see for the first unification of the whole of Mesopotamia under Babylon s overlordship as a result of the king Hammurabi s expansive foreign policy. It is, then, no coincident that in the aftermath of the Mari Age the Babylonian form of Akkadian becomes the lingua franca of international diplomacy in the region (see Bryce 2003: 13 14; Leahy 2006: 231; Kuhrt 1997: 4; Van de Mieroop 2007: 34, 201). 10
Rankin 1956: 68 110). And yet, there was still something parochial 15 about this development, confined as these city-states were to a limited area of Mesopotamia and Syria with their close cultural, linguistic, and religious ties. In fact, it was during the LBA the Amarna age in the mid-14th century of which was the culmination point that we can see the appearance of an ancient international system covering the whole Near East (Cohen & Westbrook 2000: 11; Liverani 2000/2001: 15/2; Ragionieri 2000: 46). This multipolar system where the great states participated in a common system without one of them dominating all the others was rather unusual in the history of the ancient world where power was usually tending more toward imperial unity. Before examining more closely the Amarna period, it is appropriate to bring some further light on the Ebla age since the oldest surviving diplomatic documents date back to this period. The oldest diplomatic letter that has survived to posterity was the one written by the king of Ebla, Irkab-damu, to Zizi, king of Hamazi 16 at the start of the 23 rd century BCE. We should not forget, however, that it is the first letter of its kind only to the modern world: without a doubt, similar kinds of missives were exchanged even before this particular moment although it has to be said that most likely it took several hundred years before there was a leap from a purely instrumental use of the writing primarily for the needs of economic administration into a more intellectual one (see Charpin 2010: 115; Michalowski 1993: 2; Nissen 2006: 797 98). The actual content of the letter is as follows (translation 17, with few stylistic changes, after Pettinato 1991: 240 1): You are my brother and I m your brother. whatever desire comes from your mouth I will grant, just as you will grant the desire that comes from my mouth. Good mercenaries send me, I pray: since you are my brother and I am your brother; ten wooden wagon ropes and two boxwood wagons I, Ibubu, have turned over to the messenger for you. Irkab-Damu, the king of Ebla is the brother of Zizi, the king of Hamazi, just as Zizi, the king of Hamazi, is the brother of Irkab-Damu, the king of Ebla. When we look at the form of the letter, it gives us interesting hints for the diplomatic protocol of the Ebla age. The expression brother seems to follow a rhetorical formula indicating a longer tradition of similar kind of diplomatic correspondence (see Podany 2010: 26 32). Addressing the second party as brother is a familiar appellation in later periods in 15 A word of caution, however, is in order: diplomatic relations in the Near East already during the Amorite period (ca. 2100 1595 BCE.) extended from western Syria to Mesopotamia and as far as Elam in the east. Yet Egypt was conspicuously absent from the international scene in the Near East except for Byblos in the Levant (see Charpin et Ziegler 2003: 26 7). 16 The actual location of Hamazi (see appendix 3) is not exactly known but it is believed to have situated in the north-eastern Mesopotamia, somewhere between the border of present-day Iraq and Iran (on this question, see Michalowski 1993: 13; Shea 1984: 143). 17 The letter was written in Eblaite, which is a Semitic language closely related but distinct from the Northwest (Hebrew, Phoenician, Ugaritic) and East Semitic (Akkadian) languages. Eblaite is widely accepted as the earliest documented Semitic language together with Akkadian in the region. Although there is not an absolute certainty, it would appear that the language of Ebla was the lingua franca of large parts of the Near East during the third millennium just as Akkadian and Aramaic were in the second and first millennium (for further linguistic analysis, see Pettinato 1991: 172 73; see also Bryce 2009: 210; Catagnoti 2003: 227). 11
international history and it appears to reflect not only cordiality but also the psychological desire to seek acceptance and prestige. 18 This would be a major theme in the Near Eastern diplomacy during the second millennium. Noteworthy feature of this letter is its repetitive structure, which seems to suggest a heavy emphasis on reciprocity as if to look for assurances. The fact that Irkab-Damu is asking for mercenaries from the king of Hamazi probably tells us something about the military might of the latter and the relatively close ties between these two kingdoms which were nevertheless situated quite far apart. From the point of view of analyzing how the inter-state relations developed in the ancient Near East, however, a more interesting example is the Treaty between Ebla and Ashur also known as Abarsal treaty. It is considered to be the oldest international treaty. It was not, however, a parity treaty although the evidence indicates their existence already in the third millennium (more on this, see section 4) (see e.g. Cooper 2004: 245 48; Podany 2010: 31). It was signed in the context of Ebla wanting to secure its commercial interests from Carchemish to Harran in upper Mesopotamia (see appendixes 3 and 4) in the aftermath of a territorial dispute with Mari (see Milano 2006: 1227 28). Again, it seems highly unlikely, that it was the very first treaty between independent entities but so far it happens to be the earliest that have yet been excavated dating back to the middle of the third millennium. The treaty starts by enumerating the lands that belong to the kingdom of Ebla. Below an excerpt of the opening (after Pettinato 1991: 230): The city-state and its trade centers belong to Ebla s ruler (Ebrium); the city-state Kablul and its trade centers belong to Ebla s ruler; the city-state of Za-ar in Uziladu and its trade centers belong to Ebla s rules; the city-state of Guttanum land and its trade centers belong to Ebla s ruler. The subjects of Ebla s ruler in all the aforesaid trade centers are under the jurisdiction of Ebla s ruler, whereas the subjects of Ashur s ruler (Tudiya) are under jurisdiction of Ashur s ruler. From this brief sketch we learn that already some 2500 years before the Common Era frontiers demarcating the borders between independent entities in this case Ebla and Assyria mattered. The rationale for the treaty was mainly to offer the Assyrian king Tudiya the use of a trading post officially controlled by Ebla, guarantee security, freedom of movement, and diplomatic immunity for the merchants, in exchange of which Assyria permitted the creation of a new trading center in its territory (see Sollberger 1980: 129 55). Out of the twenty-one articles of the treaty, number 4 stands out as it clearly states the conditions under which the merchants can move freely, giving them a sort of passport before age (translation after Pettinato 1991: 231 2): if there is no regulation, then Ja-dud (Tudiya), king of Ashur, can allow his emissaries to travel freely. This sets an important precedent for we see similar kinds of passports issued in the Amarna archive more than a thousand years later. The above article underscores the argument already made that we should avoid looking too ambitiously at a given age and then make the claim that somehow this marks the beginning or birth of a states-system. The articles 10 and 11 are also interesting for they obligate the pledging parties not to give aid to the enemies of the other party. The Abarsal treaty specifically obliges Abarsal to denounce any conspiracy against the ruler of 18 On the way the Russian Tsar Nicholas I refused to give recognition to Napoleon III, see note 23. 12
Ebla. Here we see, thus, the beginnings of what has constituted the hallmark of international alliance treaties in international history. Together these two ancient documents the diplomatic letter sent to Hamazi and the Abarsal treaty show that the ingredients were there for the existence of an international system already in the third millennium. This seriously puts into question the earlier held belief that at that epoch only the southern Mesopotamia represented by the Sumerian civilization qualified as culturally advanced whereas Syria was supposedly uncultured nomadic zone (see the argument of Cohen 1999: 3; Cooper 2003: 242 45; Pettinato 1991: 5 6, 173, 229 37; Podany 2010: 29 32). 4 THE AMARNA 19 PERIOD (CA. 1365 1330 BCE) Before examining the Amarna period, which has been the most widely researched phase in the study of the ancient Near East, until later discoveries made in different parts of the region, it is appropriate to look briefly in what way the political landscape changed during the 14 th and 13 th centuries. First, the membership of the club of great powers took a different form when Mittani (see map appendixes 3 and 4) was wiped out by the Hittite Empire under Suppiluliuma in ca. 1350 BCE. Second, we witness the rise of Assyria during this brief time phase covered by the diplomatic letters. Third, Babylonia, which was in any case geographically in the sidelines of events, had to watch more or less helplessly how, of what used to be its vassal in the north, that is Assyria, was accepted as member in the restricted club of the Great Kings. Interestingly, this was recorded in the Amarna letters. Although the Amarna period lasted only few decades, it is almost certain that this discovery is only a snapshot of what must have been much longer tradition of diplomatic correspondence. Significantly, the Amarna Age was mostly a time of peace and stability demonstrated by a rising population in the towns of Palestine, and not a continuous warfare, nor even the start of Egypt s decline in the region (see Several 1972: 128, 132) It should be mentioned that the second millennium Near East saw the rise of great territorial states in contrast to the third millennium when indepen-dent political units were significantly smaller in size (for a brief description of the political en-tities, see Bryce 2003; Giles 1997: 1 15). This development created the proper conditions for a truly cosmopolitan inter-state environment to emerge. Our factual knowledge of the way the regional system worked in the Near East during the LBA is most solid when we turn to the Amarna period. It was during this brief time, lasting only a few decades, that the interaction between independent entities reached its zenith. The Amarna letter collection consists of 382 cuneiform tablets that describe the diplomatic correspondence under the Egyptian pharaohs Amenhotep III (ca. 1390 1353 B.C.E.) and Amenho- 19 The term Amarna can be derived from the name of a tribe of nomads, called Beni Amran, who settled in the 18 th century on the east banks of the Nile some 190 miles south of Cairo. This was the site of Akhenaten, the capital of ancient Egypt for a brief time period in the fourteenth century BCE. The site Amarna became famous when in 1887 a local woman uncovered a cache of over 300 cuneiform tablets that are now commonly known as the Amarna Letters (see e.g. Giles 1997: 18 35; Moran 1992: xiii). 13