ABSTRACT

Integrating non-Western voices remains a struggle in the path towards global international relations (IR). The dominant Eurocentric orthodoxy in IR has marginalized in particular Southeast Asian views and experiences, which are nevertheless a rich source of non-Western theorizing. In the Philippines, a potential locus of theorizing could come from an exploration of the pre-Hispanic polity of Butuan, an important trading center in northeastern Mindanao from the tenth through the 13th centuries. However, one must be wary of the primordialism of nationalist historians, seeking to legitimize the present nation-state through an appropriation of ancient history. The pitfall of nationalist historiography is the re-nationalization of IR even as they attempt to uncover non-Western insights. Therefore, a viable alternative historiographical framework for non-western theorizing is the mandala polity of O.W. Wolters. With the aid of this framework, the reconstruction of pre-colonial Butuan history based on both textual and non-textual sources would show how the use of non-traditional data sources could enrich IR’s understanding of the world. Thus, from the level of methodology, IR’s take-away is the need to diversify sources from which to reconstruct international history. On the level of theory, the history of Butuan could add more dynamism to IR by challenging its Westphalian and materialist assumptions.