2026-06-27 –, Room 302 (Seats 48)
The late nineteenth century saw the emergence of a complex of international norms and legal practices which could be considered, for the first time, truly global. The questions relating to sovereignty, citizenship, and rights which emerged in East Asia at this time constitute a critical and underexamined component of this transformation. Contact zones like the extraterritorial treaty ports of the China coast, and crisis points like the Sino-Japanese War and the Boxer uprising, presented test cases for these norms, and jurists applied new descriptive frameworks to explain the international system that emerged as a result.
This paper argues that one reason why this phenomenon has been underexamined is due to a conceptual shortcoming in the history of international relations, which still views international law as the product of a ‘diffusion’ of civilizational values from the West, with little modification or influence from other cultures. Critiquing this approach has become increasingly important, as it has been employed in recent years by both critics and supporters of a worldview characterised by the domination of ‘great powers’.
With reference to the writing of East Asian, European, and American jurists and diplomats, and the operations of extraterritorial courts and international organisations, this paper argues that East Asia was a centre for the production of international norms, not a periphery. These examples are mobilised in support of a less ‘diffusionist’ conceptual framework for international history, illustrating the early utility of international legal concepts as not only servants of the great powers, but also as a tool for promoting the sovereignty of small states and holding powerful actors to account.
International Law, Global History, China, Korea, Japan, Treaty Ports, Great Powers, Diplomatic History, Legal History
Loughlin Sweeney, FRHistS, is a Lecturer in History at Yonsei University, South Korea. His research covers the history of professionalisation, nationality, and warfare in the 19th-20th century British Empire, and the history of international law. He is the author of Irish Military Elites, Nation and Empire 1870-1925 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), and the editor of Dreams of Modernity: China, the British Empire, and the Emergence of International Norms (Routledge, forthcoming). Recent publications include ‘A Return to Great Power Geopolitics? The Historical Context of Great Power Competition in Asia’ (Asian Affairs, 2024), and ‘Western Opium Consumption in China: Informal Empire, Medicine, and Modernity, 1840-1930’ (Social History of Medicine, 2023).