Sovereignty in China
A Genealogy of a Concept since 1840

Provides a comprehensive history of the emergence and formation of the concept of sovereignty in China from the year 1840 to the present.

Maria Adele Carrai (Author)

9781108463942, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 11 March 2021

299 pages, 4 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.444 kg

'This well-researched and stylishly presented work charters the historical development and the changing meanings of a transplanted concept in a foreign soil far away from its birthplace. Carrai persuasively argues that the meaning and scope of a concept can grow independent of its origin and interact with the environment it finds itself in, thus acquiring a new life of its own … This book has contributed to our appreciation of China's international community engagement and international law, not only of the historical transformations that have taken place, but also in terms of understanding the present-day Chinese mentality.' Xingzhong Yu, Pacific Affairs

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.

Introduction
1. International law and the sinocentric ritual system: a nineteenth-century clash of normative orders
2. Secularizing a sacred empire: early translations and uses of international law
3. China's struggle for survival and the new Darwinist conception of international society (1895–1911)
4. China rejoining the world and its fictional sovereignty, 1912–1949
5. From Proletarian revolution to peaceful coexistence: sovereignty in the PRC, 1949–1989
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: International law [LB], Legal history [LAZ], Comparative law [LAM], International relations [JPS], Black & Asian studies [JFSL3]