Sacred Mandates: Asian International Relations since Chinggis Khan

by Timothy Brook (Editor), Miek Boltjes (Editor), Michael van Walt van Praag (Editor)

Contemporary discussions of international relations in Asia tend to be tethered in the present, unmoored from the historical contexts that give them meaning. Sacred Mandates , edited by Timothy Brook, Michael van Walt van Praag, and Miek Boltjes, redresses this oversight by examining the complex history of inter-polity relations in Inner and East Asia from the thirteenth century to the twentieth, in order to help us understand and develop policies to address challenges in the region today.
 
This book argues that understanding the diversity of past legal orders helps explain the forms of contemporary conflict, as well as the conflicting historical narratives that animate tensions. Rather than proceed sequentially by way of dynasties, the editors identify three “worlds”—Chingssid Mongol, Tibetan Buddhist, and Confucian Sinic—that represent different forms of civilization authority and legal order. This novel framework enables us to escape the modern tendency to view the international system solely as the interaction of independent states, and instead detect the effects of the complicated history at play between and within regions. Contributors from a wide range of disciplines cover a host of the development of international law, sovereignty, state formation, ruler legitimacy, and imperial expansion, as well as the role of spiritual authority on state behavior, the impact of modernization, and the challenges for peace processes. The culmination of five years of collaborative research, Sacred Mandates will be the definitive historical guide to international and intrastate relations in Asia, of interest to policymakers and scholars alike, for years to come.
 

Genres: History, China, Asia, Politics, International Relations, Japan

288 pages, Hardcover

Published May 21, 2018

About the author

Timothy James Brook is a Canadian historian, sinologist, and writer specializing in the study of China (sinology). He holds the Republic of China Chair, Department of History, University of British Columbia.

His research interests include the social and cultural history of the Ming Dynasty in China; law and punishment in Imperial China; collaboration during Japan's wartime occupation of China, 1937–45 and war crimes trials in Asia; global history; and historiography.

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful explanations of the layered, hierarchical interpolity relations in Inner an East Asia before European, American, and Japanese imperialism. Mongolian and Tibetan ideas about sovereignty and interpolity relations are considered as important as Sinocentric tributary practices. Like the relationships and practices that it studies the book's authorship is layered and complex, with the editors integrating contributions from many scholars.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book makes an important intervention in Asian IR by emphasizing the multi-faceted and highly dynamic histories of imperial power within East Asia, encompassing Tibetan, Mongol, and Chinese forms of rule that have interacted and combined at different points. Their hope is that the current narrative of China's rise be historicized in a longer and wider scope of regional history, and situated as itself dependent upon many of the legal and political precedents set by the Mongolian Great State under Chinghis Khan and their inheritors of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Thus, the interplay of these three legal-political systems, instead of simply the reassertion of a "fallen" Chinese supremacy, reveals much more about East Asia as a world-system, to use Wallerstein's term. I would have liked to see more engagement with contemporary issues other than the South China Sea, especially on what such histories mean for Tibet and Mongolia in their modern interactions with other East Asian nations and millenia-long struggles to maintain autonomy against Chinese assimilation.

[Melos Han-Tani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haven't finished this yet but this is an amazing book covering some of the history of international relations of the 'sinosphere' from Tibet to China to the mongol empire, what is now vietnam, etc. Very interseting in terms of challenging a certain country's narrative as to its unbroken dominance over a certain big region of the world

[Tsai Wei-chieh]

中文譯稿已出爐，尚在編輯當中。期待早日發行。某種程度上而言，本書的取向與費正清編著的《中國的世界秩序》很接近，不過在體例上有所創新，在深度上也有所突破。大致而言，如果用趙汀陽的漩渦論來比喻的話，十三世紀以降的中國世界秩序只是東亞的漩渦之一，在內亞至少還有蒙古跟藏傳佛教世界秩序兩個漩渦，彼此間互相交錯影響，到了清朝將這三個世界秩序集大成。可以結合卜正明的Great State (2019) 來讀。

[Dominik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wiele ciekawych wniosków, ale jak to bywa w przypadku tomu o wielu autorach, poziom był dość nierówny. Mnie najbardziej wciągnęły rozdziały o świecie buddyzmu tybetańskiego.