The Problem Stated

Abstract

One feature of international relations, clear in retrospect, is that the participants in policy-making and negotiations often had quite different views of what their interlocutors meant or intended. The basic conceptions of the two sides in confrontation may be so wholly different that no meeting of minds is possible. The first encounters between the inhabitants of the American continent and their Spanish conquerors is an obvious example, given much salience by the outpouring of literature at the time of the Columbus quincentenary in 1992. Another example merely two hundred years ago is the British expedition to China in 1792–4 where the records show that what the British thought their mission had achieved and the way in which the Chinese looked at it were totally at variance with each other.¹ Some might argue that such differences of interpretation of words and symbols still bedevil the relations of the West with China (perhaps also with Japan) in our own day.