International Law As A World Order In Late Imperial China

The topic of this book is the early introduction and reception of international law in China. International law is studied as part of the introduction of the Western sciences and as a theoretical orientation in international affairs 1847-1911.

Today, different attitudes of various nations towards international law, different forms of civilization, history, and tradition have been exerting themselves as never before on the development of international law. Accordingly, a comprehensive study of these attitudes and a profound exploration and identification of factors of decisive importance for the formation and development of these attitudes are indispensable to, and vitally important for, the future development of international law. The present study focuses on one country, namely, China. This study attempts to make as comprehensive and inquiry as possible and over an extensive time-scale into the Chinese attitude towards international law from a broad world order perspective.

This book examines the most important issues determining the international status of Taiwan today: its international legal status, the viability of its flexible democracy, its efforts to gain participation or membership in international organizations, most notably the United Nations, and its future relations with mainland China, ranging from reunification to declared independence. Issues of American and European foreign policy and of domestic Chinese and Taiwanese politics are also addressed where relevant. This book is unique in that it looks at the question of Taiwan from the perspective of both international law and politics as it confronts the imperatives of law and the limitations of real world politics. As a result it offers insights and strategies that are both sensible and feasible. This book is aimed at scholars and practitioners of international law and international relations alike.

"Recentering the World recovers a richly contextual, detailed history of Western-imposed legal structures in China, as well as engagements with international law by Chinese officials, jurists, and citizens. Beginning in the Late Qing era, it shows how international law functioned as a channel for power relations, techniques of economic domination, and novel forms of resistance. The book also radically diversifies traditionally Eurocentric accounts of modern international law's origins, demonstrating how, by the mid twentieth century, Chinese jurists had made major contributions to international organizations and the United Nations system, the international judiciary, the laws of armed conflict, and more. Drawing on extensive archival research, this book is a valuable guide to China's often conflicted role in international law, its reception and contention of concepts of sovereignty, property, obligation, and autonomy, and its gradual move from the "periphery" to a shared spot at the "center" of global legal order"--

This book provides a comprehensive history of the emergence and the formation of the concept of sovereignty in China from the year 1840 to the present. It contributes to broadening the history of modern China by looking at the way the notion of sovereignty was gradually articulated by key Chinese intellectuals, diplomats and political figures in the unfolding of the history of international law in China, rehabilitates Chinese agency, and shows how China challenged Western Eurocentric assumptions about the progress of international law. It puts the history of international law in a global perspective, interrogating the widely-held belief of international law as universal order and exploring the ways in which its history is closely anchored to a European experience that fails to take into account how the encounter with other non-European realities has influenced its formation.

The history of ideas on rule of law for world order is a fascinating one, as revealed in this comparative study of both Eastern and Western traditions. This book discerns 'rule of law as justice' conceptions alternative to the positivist conceptions of the liberal internationalist rule of law today. The volume begins by revisiting early-modern European roots of rule of law for world order thinking. In doing so it looks to Northern Humanism and to natural law, in the sense of justice as morally and reasonably ordered self-discipline. Such a standard is not an instrument of external monitoring but of self-reflection and self-cultivation. It then considers whether comparable concepts exist in Chinese thought. Inspired by Confucius and even Laozi, the Chinese official and intellectual elite readily imagined that international law was governed by moral principles similar to their own. A series of case studies then reveals the dramatic change after the East-West encounters from the 1860s until after 1901, as Chinese disillusionment with the Hobbesian positivism of Western international law becomes ever more apparent. What, therefore, are the possibilities of traditional Chinese and European ethical thinking in the context of current world affairs? Considering the obstacles which stand in the way of this, both East and West, this book reaches the conclusion that everything is possible even in a world dominated by state bureaucracies and late capitalist postmodernism. The rational, ethical spirit is universal.

This book analyses the historical significance of rivaling concepts of world order in 20th century East Asia. It discusses in detail the relationship of territoriality and political rule, discourses of amity and enmity, and finally the role of hegemoniality in the process of imaging a possible postnational world in twenty-first century East Asia and beyond.

This book brings together 18 contributions by authors from different legal systems and backgrounds. They address the political implications of the writing of the history of legal issues ranging from slavery over the use of force and extraterritorial jurisdiction to Eurocentrism.