%Hierarchy and anarchy in early modern East Asia

Abstract

This chapter argues that different international systems with different organizing principles have existed and may exist again; and that the East Asian international system experienced measurably different patterns of war, trade, and alliances. In the Westphalian system, anarchy leads to a Hobessian world of incessant war of all against all, equality is not only most stable, but is also inevitable and normatively sought, and those equal and identical units – nation-states – lead to a balance of power system. China stood at the top of the hierarchy, and there was no intellectual challenge to the rules of the game until the nineteenth century and the arrival of the Western powers. Two common criticisms about scholarship on historical East Asia are that the system was not called the tribute system at the time, and that the tribute system itself was not an all-encompassing complete set of norms and institutions that were used everywhere by everyone.