East Asia before the West : five centuries of trade and tribute /

Recent scholarship has tended to demythologize and downplay the significance of the Sinocentric tribute system by which late imperial China hierarchically ordered interstate relations with its neighbors in East and Southeast Asia. Departing from conventional wisdom, Kang (Univ. of Southern California) holds that the pre-1842 tribute system constituted a viable indigenous alternative to the European "Westphalian" system of formal interstate equality marred by incessant interstate conflicts. Kang depicts a diplomatic and commercial order bound by mutually accepted Confucian ideological tenets and social norms. Over five centuries, the tribute system served to minimize open conflict and smooth relations between China and its ritual subordinates, Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. There was no such institutional modus vivendi available for China's often-hostile relations with nomads on its fluid and insecure northern frontiers, however. Kang concludes by reasserting the underlying integrity of a unique system of arranging interstate relations that shaped its participants well into the 19th century and continues to have contemporary repercussions (China's potential hegemonic role in the region, for example). His study assuredly renews the debate on a contested topic in both East Asian and global history. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate through professional audiences as well as general readers. R. P. Gardella emeritus, United States Merchant Marine Academy