Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Preface
- 1 The problem of change in international relations: rhetoric, markers, and metrics
- 2 States and statehood
- 3 Territoriality
- 4 Sovereignty
- 5 International law
- 6 Diplomacy
- 7 International trade
- 8 Colonialism
- 9 War
- 10 International institutions: types, sources, and consequences of change
- References
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
3 - Territoriality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Preface
- 1 The problem of change in international relations: rhetoric, markers, and metrics
- 2 States and statehood
- 3 Territoriality
- 4 Sovereignty
- 5 International law
- 6 Diplomacy
- 7 International trade
- 8 Colonialism
- 9 War
- 10 International institutions: types, sources, and consequences of change
- References
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Summary
One essential attribute of our definition of statehood is fixed territoriality. Like the state itself, this is a relatively new phenomenon, one that is historically unique. The lineal, surveyed borders that separate contemporary states are a practice going back only to the seventeenth century. Territorial limits of most historical empires, traditional kingdoms, city-states, and tribal and lineage groups were mostly floating zones of indeterminate extent. Traditional Chinese conceptions of territory, for example, bore little relation to those that underlie the doctrines of contemporary international law. For them, territory was defined primarily in cultural terms. The Chinese world was one of hierarchy, with the Han civilization in the middle and the barbarians on the peripheries. Since there was constant intermingling and movement of populations, the exact location between centers and peripheries could not be established in lineal terms. Malcolm Anderson (1996: 88) explains:
Imperial China … held the view that the empire had two frontiers, an inner and an outer. The latter was the limit, sometimes fanciful, of Chinese influence or, as in the steppes of central Asia, indicated the limit of temporary Chinese occupation. The outer limits of Chinese influence did not necessarily imply that the Chinese had the intention of occupying the territory up to this frontier. It was a conception of the boundaries of “the Chinese world.”
China was typical of pre-modern polities in the sense that its rulers defined themselves primarily in terms of centers rather than peripheries.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Taming the SovereignsInstitutional Change in International Politics, pp. 73 - 111Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004