A rich and enlightening study of Chinese international relations, this book examines Chinese world ordering before the West as both intellectual history and institutional practices in deep world history. It shows how engaging China’s historical pursuit of ordering the world can contribute to our search for global foundations of international thought.Offering a distinctive English School perspective, this volume is a call to put studies of Chinese international relations in their proper historical context. It argues that such an approach leads to a better understanding of Chinese ideas and statecraft and contends that reimagining the international is indispensable for a fruitful pursuit of knowledge production in the construction of global IR.
Yongjin Zhang is Professor of International Politics at the University of Bristol.
IntroductionPart 1: International Thought in Ancient China1. The Idea of Order in Ancient Chinese Political Thought2. World Ordering in Confucian MoralpolitikPart 2: Chinese World Ordering before the West3. System, Empire, and State in Chinese World Ordering4. The Tribute System as International Society5. Europeans in Pax Sinica, 1513–17936. China in European Worlding, 1500–1800Part 3: Chinese World Ordering as Intellectual History7. Chinese World Ordering as History of Ideas8. The ‘International Turn’ in Chinese Intellectual HistoryEpilogue: Reimagining the International
“The best book on China in International Relations because in rethinking its long history in a non-Eurocentric global context, it also tells us new things about the international system today.” John M. Hobson, University of Sheffield