China among equals : the Middle Kingdom and its neighbors, 10th-14th centuries / edited by Morris Rossabi.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Rossabi, Morris.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

China--Foreign relations--To 1644.

China.

International relations.

China--History--960-1644.

History.

Physical Description:

xiv, 419 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, [1982]

Summary:

Scholars have long accepted China's own view of its traditional foreign relations: that China devised its own world order and maintained it from the second century B.C. to the nineteenth century. China ruled out equality with any nation: foreign rulers and their envoys were treated as subordinates or inferiors, required to send periodic tribute embassies to the Chinese emperor. The Chinese court was otherwise uninterested in foreign lands. Its principal interests were to maintain peace with what it perceived to be barbarian neighbors and to coax or coerce them into admitting China's superiority and accepting the Chinese emperor as the Son of Heaven.

But Chinese foreign policy was not monolithic. Court officials in traditional times were much more realistic and pragmatic than is commonly assumed. They did not scorn foreign trade, nor were they ignorant of foreign lands. Challenging the accepted view of Chinese foreign relations, the authors of China among Equals contribute to a clearer assessment of Chinese foreign relations and policy. From the tenth to the thirteenth centuries, China did not dogmatically enforce its own world order. Chinese were eager for foreign trade and knowledgeable about their neighbors. The Sung (960-1279), the principal dynasty during that era, was flexible in its dealings with foreigners. Its officials recognized the military and political weakness of the dynasty, and in general they adopted a realistic and pragmatic foreign policy. They were compelled to accept foreign states as equals, and the relations between China and other states were defined by diplomatic parity.

Contents:

Part I China in Disarray

1 Diplomacy for Survival: Domestic and Foreign Relations of Wu Yueh, 907-978 / Edmund H. Worthy, Jr. 17

Part II The Sung Dynasty in a Multi-State System

2 The Rhetoric of a Lesser Empire: Early Sung Relations with Its Neighbors / Wang Gungwu 47

3 Barbarians or Northerners: Northern Sung Images of the Khitans / Tao Jing-Shen 66

Part III Institutions for Foreign Relations in the Multi-State System

4 Sung Foreign Trade: Its Scope and Organization / Shiba Yoshinobu 89

5 Sung Embassies: Some General Observations / Herbert Franke 116

Part IV Foreign Lands and the Sung

6 National Consciousness in Medieval Korea: The Impact of Liao and Chin on Koryo / Michael C. Rogers 151

7 Tibetan Relations with Sung China and with the Mongols / Luciano Petech 173

8 Old Illusions and New Realities: Sung Foreign Policy, 1217-1234 / Charles A. Peterson 204

Part V The Mongol Hegemony

9 The Yuan Dynasty and the Uighurs of Turfan in the 13th Century / Thomas T. Allsen 243

10 Turks in China under the Mongols: A Preliminary Investigation of Turco-Mongol Relations in the 13th and 14th Centuries / Igor De Rachewiltz 281

Part VI China's Foreign Relations in Historical Context

11 Yin and Yang in the China-Manchuria-Korea Triangle / Gari Ledyard 313.

Notes:

Revised papers from a conference held in Issaquah, Wash., July 1978.

Includes index.

Bibliography: pages 377-407.

ISBN:

0520043839

OCLC:

237266130