‘Other Diplomacies’ and World Order: Historical Insights from Canadian–Asian Relations

Abstract

This article examines the diplomatic practices of non-state actors in the history of Canadian–Eastern Asian relations in order to theorize and show empirically how diplomacies make and can transform world orders. Analysing examples of trans-Pacific missionary, commercial and labour interactions from the late eighteenth century to the Second World War, the article points to how the diplomatic practices of non-state actors, often in everyday circumstances, enacted Canadian–Asian relations. They, in turn, constituted and challenged the hierarchical social relations of the European imperial world order that was linked with race, class, gender, civilization and culture — hierarchies that conditioned patterns of thought and action, in that order. The analysis uses and further develops the concept of ‘other diplomacies’, as introduced by Beier and Wylie, to highlight the centrality to world orders of practices that have a diplomatic character, even when the actors involved do not represent states.