China Studies Centre, the University of Sydney
Thursday, 9 May 2019 from 1:30 pm to 3:30 pm (AEST)
Seminar Room 342, New Law School Building Annex, The University of Sydney
Register: http://bit.ly/ScottRelyea9May
In 1864, the translated pages of 萬國公法 wanguo gongfa (The Public Law of All States) formally introduced the principles of international law to Qing scholar-officials. Over the succeeding decades, international law’s utility seemed limited to discrete negotiations, indicative of a reticence by Qing officials to fully embrace its conceptual basis. Yet by century’s end, Sichuan Province officials overseeing the borderland of eastern Tibet began to indigenise its principles, adopting an absolutist conception of territorial sovereignty. This indigenisation fostered a transformation of long-standing imperial frontier policies manifest in Sichuan officials’ outward appeals to a principle of ‘non-intervention’ substantiated by an inward-looking ‘civilising mission.’ This presentation will explore the translation and circulation of international law and its conceptual basis in China’s southwest borderlands in the early 20th century. Its indigenisation invigorated international law’s importance to Chinese state-building and infused a reoriented conception of territorial sovereignty into regional relations.
About the Speaker
Scott Relyea is assistant professor of Asian history at Appalachian State University (USA), and currently a Fulbright U.S. Scholar and senior visiting scholar in the School of History and Culture at Sichuan University. A historian of late imperial and modern China, Dr. Relyea’s research centres on state-building and nationalism in China’s southwest borderlands, and the global circulation of concepts of statecraft and international law at the time. His current book project is titled Gazing at the Tibetan Plateau: China’s Infrontier and the Early Twentieth Century Evolution of Sino-Tibetan Relations.