In 1636, the Dutch East India Company official, Joost Schouten sat down to pen an account of the kingdom of Ayutthaya, or Siam. He described what he saw as an exotic and utterly unfamiliar legal system, characterized by despotic excesses and unfathomable customs. This chapter outlines an approach on Alexandrowicz's insights about the emergence of a comprehensive law of nations and that recognizes the importance of empires to the international order without defining non-European law and sovereignty as problems that Western jurists and international lawyers had to solve. As with protocol and jurisdiction, the long nineteenth century brought important shifts in the way protection functioned internationally. A quality of imprecision in such basic understandings could provide valuable flexibility and prevent conflict. It sometimes also sharpened conflict by introducing new jurisdictional tensions, creating opportunities for flawed performances of protocol, or exposing the fictions embedded within offers of protection.