Description
This paper engages historical evidence from South and East Asia to examine how rising powers have historically won domination over existing international orders. Existing explanations of successful domination-seekers foreground a coercion-intensive path to primacy, through wars of universal conquest. Conversely, I argue that there are paths to primacy beyond blitzkrieg. Specifically, this paper will trace out an alternative path to primacy through displacement. This path to primacy rests on rising powers exploiting the existing order’s openness first to gain system access; second to surreptitiously cultivate alternative commercial and security patronage networks centred around themselves; and third to leverage these networks to displace and ultimately replace the incumbent international order. Historical evidence is drawn from the English East India Company’s conquest of India and the Qing conquest of China to illustrate this framework. The paper concludes with a brief plausibility probe of the framework’s applicability to understanding China’s current challenge to the US-dominated liberal international order.
