How did the Sinitic empires of the Qin and Han interact with their neighbours before the adoption of the concept of international law from the West, following the establishment of the nation state with fixed frontiers in the late seventeenth century? The dominant model is the concept of ‘tribute’ first outlined by John K. Fairbank based on the foreign-relations practices of the late imperial Qing empire. This chapter argues that is incorrect. Apart from engaging in military action, the early East Asian empires followed the ways in which states had related to each other for centuries prior to the establishment of the empires, i.e. by accepting hostages, which developed into the giving of pledges (both used the same term, zhi), and in establishing marriage relations. The earlier ritual of ‘covenant making’ was replaced by a new legal instrument, the binding yue ‘agreement,’ a form of contract. Although local and regional authorities gave ‘prestations’ to the central court in imperial times, it is argued that ‘tribute’ (gong) was not significant until the later Han, when, on the basis of the mention of tribute in two canonical texts, it was incorporated into Confucian world view.

A brief introduction surveys current thinking on how to subdivide the period into phases of broadly similar durations spanning roughly a century and a half in absolute years. The remainder of the chapter focuses on three distinct topics: ceramic pictorialism in post-palatial Mycenaean art; an update on scholarship dealing with the dark-surfaced, handmade, and burnished ceramic classes that have been recognized as significant novelties in Aegean container assemblages from the end of the thirteenth through the eleventh centuries BCE, along with their spread eastward in some cases to Cyprus and southwestern Syria during the twelfth century; and the noteworthy spatial expansion of production centers of Mycenaeanizing decorated fine wares during the twelfth century to multiple locations on Cyprus, in Macedonia, and at various sites along the Levantine mainland from Cilicia in the north to Philistia in the south.

From the ninth to the fourteenth centuries, Japan purposely eschewed concluding diplomatic relations with the countries on its periphery. The international environment that made this fundamental policy possible first formed in the ninth century in the East China Sea with the appearance of maritime merchants. Japan was able to obtain foreign goods through trade ships without having to follow troublesome diplomatic procedures. In addition, no strong hegemonic power could threaten Japan militarily after the ninth century. Assuming this environment, Japan did not engage with any other country beyond temporary communications. Japan’s environment changed with the appearance of the Mongols as a hegemonic nation in thirteenth century. But even under military pressure, Japan refused to conclude diplomatic relations with the Mongols. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, the Mongols approved trade with Japan without the conclusion of formal diplomatic relations. In the latter half of the fourteenth century, the Ming’s making trade inseparable from the paying of tribute forced Japan to honour the Ming demand. This caused a radical change to Japan’s foreign diplomatic relations.

This chapter examines the relationship between preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and the multilateral trading system represented by the WTO. It explores the historical context of PTAs, their proliferation, economic effects, and WTO surveillance. The chapter analyses the legal texts governing PTAs, including GATT Article XXIV, GATS Article V, and the Enabling Clause, and discusses controversies surrounding their interpretation. It also delves into regulatory issues within PTAs, such as rules of origin and provisions extending beyond WTO rules. Furthermore, the chapter addresses WTO dispute settlement cases involving PTAs and the evolving landscape of trade agreements, including digital economy and critical minerals agreements. Finally, it considers the systemic effects of PTAs on the multilateral trading system, highlighting both positive and discriminatory aspects.

This chapter explores the complexities of discrimination in international trade law, a core principle that mandates equal treatment of foreign and domestic goods, services, and intellectual property. Despite its significance, the definition of discrimination remains contested, with debates focusing on intent versus impact and the comparability of products. The chapter analyses these issues, examining key legal texts like the GATT, GATS, and TRIPS agreements, and the evolving jurisprudence of GATT panels and the WTO Appellate Body. It highlights the shifts in interpreting ‘discrimination’, including the move from considering both ‘aim and effect’ to focusing primarily on the effect of trade measures. The chapter concludes by discussing the challenges in reaching a clear, agreed-upon standard for discrimination and the implications for international trade.

This chapter examines the relationship between trade and development. Centring the heterogeneity of developing states within the World Trade Organization (WTO), the chapter briefly analyses some of the trade law interests that are most important to these different types of developing country. It then turns to a question: how has international trade law accommodated the needs of different types of developing country through special and differential treatment?  The chapter contends that the rules of the global economic order and the WTO in relation to trade were developed and are being implemented in the shadow of a fiercely contested geopolitical power struggle. Despite the flexibilities in the WTO, developing and small island developing states’ trade interests are significantly marginalised in the rules’ implementation. Without fundamentally reimagining the inequities in our international trade regime, mere ‘window dressing’ or adoption of new rules of trade would only further marginalise the trade interests of the developing countries and SIDS in a non-inclusive way.

This chapter examines the international rules governing SOEs, including those in the World Trade Organization and various free trade agreements (FTAs), focusing on the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). The chapter analyses the specific provisions of CPTPP Chapter 17, which sets forth a comprehensive set of disciplines on SOEs, including definitions of SOEs, commercial activities, commercial considerations, designated monopolies, and non-commercial assistance. It also discusses the concepts of adverse effect and injury caused by SOEs, as well as exceptions to the disciplines. Finally, the chapter offers observations on the CPTPP’s rules, including the definition of SOEs, the scope of commercial activities, and the extraterritorial effect of FTAs.

The Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex, or SACC, a collection of city-states that surrounded the northeastern corner of the Mediterranean Sea during the early first millennium BCE, is traditionally understudied by researchers interested in contacts between the Aegean and the Near East. In part this is due to the interest garnered by the Phoenicians and their far-flung colonies, but it is also because the complicated ethnolinguistic composition of the city-states themselves defies easy categorization. This chapter presents an overview of the material evidence for the robust exchange between the Aegean and SACC during the early first millennium BCE. Syro-Anatolian finds in the Aegean, especially luxury items including worked ivory and bronze objects, couple with Aegean ceramics in the Levant and southeastern Anatolia to index a surprisingly robust exchange between the two spheres. Although the mechanisms of this exchange remain unclear, it is now apparent that SACC was a major component of Iron Age eastern Mediterranean cultural and economic networks.

The Spanish missionary Bartolomé de Las Casas wrote his ‘Defense of the Indians’ in response to the theologian and philosopher Juan Ginés De Sepúlveda’s ‘On the Just Causes of War against the Indians’. Both Casas and Sepúlveda point to Aristotle as a source for their arguments. This chapter approaches the debate as a way to think through the relationships between race and Indigeneity. First, I introduce the concept of Indigeneity and the ways it has been negotiated between Indigenous peoples and settler-colonialists. I then move to critically analysing Casas’ arguments, showing how his understanding of Aristotle’s notion of ‘barbarians’ has had a lasting legacy on the definition of Indigeneity. Finally, I turn to the absence of Indigenous voices in Casas’ account as a broader moment to consider Indigenous future(s) in Classics and possible areas for re-negotiating reception and Indigenous scholars’ agency in those negotiations.

This chapter explores the relationship between international trade and sustainable development, with a particular focus on climate change. It traces the evolution of the multilateral trading system from its origins in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade to the present day, highlighting the shift from a focus on trade liberalisation to a broader commitment to sustainable development. The chapter examines how the World Trade Organization has grappled with integrating environmental concerns into its framework, including the development of ‘greening’ jurisprudence, institutions, and rules. It proposes a reform agenda to further align the trading system with global sustainability goals, emphasising the need for alignment with climate change commitments, harmonised sustainability standards, reformed subsidy approaches, governance and institutional reforms, and a focus on equity and justice.

The discovery of the Arthasastra of Kautilya in 1905, with its subsequent full publication and translation, triggered a re-evaluation by Indians of the political sophistication of their past, which involved a nationalist reclamation. Importantly, that included ancient Indian interpolity law. This chapter engages two periods of Indian historiography of the Indian interpolity past. After the First World War Indian writers addressed the advances of Indian interpolity law, with emphasis on Kautilya, the Mahabharata and the Code of Manu. Writers focusing primarily on international law saw the Indian past as particularly advanced by comparison to the failures of the West. A second wave after 1947 made similar moves but from the perspective of an India consciously taking its place on the world stage, and after Partition. The chapter identifies the tendency towards Indian interpolity past by writers focusing on international law, while those engaged in broader historical writing filled in a broader spectrum, such as realist depictions particularly of Kautilya but also of or other Indian writers or practice.

After briefly surveying the state of the field of classical reception studies in Asian and diasporic Asian contexts, this chapter focuses on the possibilities and implications of Asian American classical reception. This chapter argues that to refer to works as Asian American classical reception is to imbue them with a historical consciousness rooted in Asian American identity formation, which emphasises not only the political, but also the intersectional and the coalitional. Drawing on critical classical reception and Asian American studies, this chapter theorises Asian American classical reception as a critical site in which to break down imagined geographies, racialised hierarchies, and other axes of domination that continue to prop up the false binary of East and West, and with it, the idea of an exclusively White and Western inheritance of Graeco-Roman antiquity. It concludes by applying this theory to a case study, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior.

A primary purpose of this chapter is not to give a comprehensive overview on a process of accepting modern Western international law in Japan from the middle of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century, but to add fresh perspectives to analyse the process. The central focus here is on a vigorously debated issue at that time among the officials of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japanese politicians and Western envoys stationed in Japan: the issue of the territorial sea and the inland sea of Japan, especially the breadth of the territorial sea. Two main cases, the Proclamations of Neutrality at the time of the 1870 Franco-German (Prussian) War and a collision case between the Chishima, a Japanese warship, and the Ravenna, a British post boat, in the Inland Sea of Japan in 1892 , are analysed in detail from this perspective.