|
Product Description
From the founding of the Ming dynasty in 1368 to the start of the Opium Wars in 1841, China has engaged in only two large-scale conflicts with its principal neighbors, Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. These four territorial and centralized states have otherwise fostered peaceful and long-lasting relationships with one another, and as they have grown more powerful, the atmosphere around them has stabilized.Focusing on the role of the "tribute system" in maintaining stability in East Asia and in fostering diplomatic and commercial exchange, Kang contrasts this history against the example of Europe and the East Asian states' skirmishes with nomadic peoples to the north and west. Although China has been the unquestioned hegemon in the region, with other political units always considered secondary, the tributary order entailed military, cultural, and economic dimensions that afforded its participants immense latitude. Europe's "Westphalian" system, on the other hand, was based on formal equality among states and balance-of-power politics, resulting in incessant interstate conflict.
Scholars tend to view Europe's experience as universal, but Kang upends this tradition, emphasizing East Asia's formal hierarchy as an international system with its own history and character. This approach not only recasts our understanding of East Asian relations but also defines a model that applies to other hegemonies outside the European order.
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
- International Order in Diversity: War, Trade and Rule in the Indian Ocean (Cambridge Studies in International Relations)
- American Grand Strategy and East Asian Security in the Twenty-First Century
- Powerplay: The Origins of the American Alliance System in Asia (Princeton Studies in International History and Politics)
- Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present
- Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes
- The Cold War: A New History
- The First Total War: Napoleon's Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It
- Africa's Discovery of Europe
- The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems Change (Princeton Studies in International History and Politics)
- Rome: Empire of the Eagles, 753 BC – AD 476
*If this is not the "East Asia Before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute (Contemporary Asia in the World)" product you were looking for, you can check the other results by clicking this link. Details were last updated on Nov 6, 2024 08:59 +08.