Rethinking the 'Tribute System

Broadening the Conceptual Horizon of Historical East Asian Politics

Bibliographic Data

ID12907421
AuthorsZ Feng (0000-0003-4077-3668, Tsinghua University, corresponding author), Feng Zhang (0000-0002-7444-1103, Tsinghua University, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume2
Issue4
Pages597-626
Publication date2009-09-14
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Chinese Journal of International Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1750-8916 • E-ISSN: 1750-8924
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/cjip/pop010
OpenAlexW2084934841
LanguageEN
Citations received39

A notable feature of the study of historical East Asian politics is its absence of rigorous systemic theories explaining relationships between imperial China and its neighbours and how they worked. Long pre-eminent in this field is the idea of the ‘tribute system’ and its central importance to organizing our thinking about historical East Asian politics. But what is the ‘tribute system’ as it is used by these various scholars? How useful are their tribute-system perspectives and models in shedding light on historical East Asian politics? In this article I critically evaluate the venerable literature on the ‘tribute system’ in an attempt to clarify the concepts and broaden the main themes of traditional China's foreign relations and the larger political dynamics between China and its neighbours. I write from a political-science perspective, but engage extensively in predominantly historical scholarship on the subject. Except for a few notable exceptions in recent years, the ‘international relations’ of historical East Asia has been almost exclusively an historian's domain. East Asian diplomatic history saw a remarkable period of intellectual creativity from the 1930s to the 1960s, thanks chiefly to the pioneering work of John King Fairbank,1 after which historians’ interest waned, to the extent that the area became ‘unfashionable and underpopulated’.2 Research during the 30-year ‘classic era’ on China's foreign relations produced important insights and laid foundations for understanding historical East Asian politics. But analytical confusion and empirical omissions are evident in this body of research. In the 1980s, historians started re-examining Fairbank's ‘tribute system’ and ‘Chinese world order’ frameworks, exposing hidden assumptions and bringing to light new historical evidence that contradicts existing interpretations. But although this research critiques Fairbank, it does not in general try to replace his tribute system model with any new explanatory frameworks

China · East Asia · Environmental ethics · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · Tribute · Asian Studies and History · Chinese history and philosophy · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Philosophy

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