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In a bravura example of social science scholarship, David Kang deftly synthesizes an enormous body of historical writings into an elegant analysis of five centuries of foreign relations in East Asia. Kang contrasts a European/Western Westphalian system that stresses formal equality and a balance-of-power among states with an East Asian “tribute system” that emphasized formal inequality and clear hierarchy with China as the unchallenged regional hegemon. He argues that in contrast to Europe’s incessant warfare of recent centuries, Confucian East Asia experienced almost no wars among the major states (China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam), largely uncontested borders, and high levels of dynastic stability. The three guiding principles of the East Asian international system, hierarchy, status, and hegemony, were predicated on shared cultural beliefs about what states really valued, what states expected of each other, and the relation between trade and tribute. Finally, he maintains that an acquaintance with East Asia’s past can and should inform our understanding of the present and that many of today’s most bitterly contested issues, such as sovereignty over the Spratlys and other maritime territories, may be framed as historical issues but are in fact contemporary political questions that would have meant little to
Journal of Chinese Military History – Brill
Published: Jan 1, 2012
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