Rethinking Sino-Japanese Alienation
History Problems and Historical Opportunities
Barry Buzan author Evelyn Goh author
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:23rd Jan '20
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This paperback is available in another edition too:
- Hardback£117.50(9780198851387)
Bitterly contested memories of war, colonisation, and empire among Japan, China, and Korea have increasingly threatened regional order and security over the past three decades. In Sino-Japanese relations, identity, territory, and power pull together in a particularly lethal direction, generating dangerous tensions in both geopolitical and memory rivalries. Buzan and Goh explore a new approach to dealing with this history problem. First, they construct a more balanced and global view of China and Japan in modern world history. Second, building on this, they sketch out the possibilities for a 21st century great power bargain between them. Buzan puts Northeast Asia's history since 1840 into both a world historical and a systematic normative context, exposing the parochial nature of the China-Japan history debate in relation to what is a bigger shared story about their encounter with modernity and the West, within which their modern encounter with each other took place. Arguing that regional order will ultimately depend substantially on the relationship between these two East Asian great powers, Goh explores the conditions under which China and Japan have been able to reach strategic bargains in the course of their long historical relationship, and uses this to sketch out the main modes of agreement that might underpin a new contemporary great power bargain between them in a variety of future scenarios for the region. The frameworks adopted here consciously blend historical contextualisation, enduring concerns with wealth, power and interest, and the complex relationship between Northeast Asian states' evolving encounters with each other and with global international society.
A remarkable book: elegantly written, cogently argued, expertly researched and fearless in its approach and arguments. * Herman T. Salton, ICU University, Tokyo, Japan, International Affairs *
There are few conflicts that are more significant to international affairs than the Sino-Japanese dispute, and few that seem more intractable. In this noteworthy book, Buzan and Goh indicate how the friction should best be understood and show approaches through which it could be overcome. It is a book of resounding importance both for those who study international relations and those preoccupied with conflict resolution and reconciliation. * O.A. Westad, Yale University *
The nature of order in Asia is one of the most pressing questions of our era, but analysis too often lacks historical depth. Goh and Buzan's study is deeply impressive in its extraordinary historical detail as well as its willingness to show continuity and change over a longer period of time in Asia. For both IR scholars and historians, this is an essential read on an urgent issue. * Rana Mitter, University of Oxford *
Rethinking Sino-Japanese Alienation makes a major contribution to understanding great power relations in Northeast Asia. It advances the profound theoretical insight that constitutive shared understandings, shared socio-normative structures, are critical in international relations. Currently, Northeast Asian states see themselves as victims and other states in the region as hostiles based on rival historical interpretations. Relations thus remain antagonistic given the lack of shared views regarding the nature of the regional society. Buzan and Goh masterfully show how the socio-normative structure is currently contested, preventing more cordial interactions. They seek to break this impasse by elucidating alternative historical interpretations that might alter current biases. * Hendrik Spruyt, Northwestern University *
International Relations theory has drawn so much from European history that it often fails to explain the intricacies of power relations elsewhere. This bold and masterly study turns to a two-power relationship between China and Japan to help rethink the role of historical continuity and change in Northeast Asia that could shape a new regional and global order. * Wang Gungwu, National University of Singapore *
- Winner of Winner, Best Book Award 2021, ISA Asia Pacific.
ISBN: 9780198851394
Dimensions: 230mm x 152mm x 19mm
Weight: 538g
356 pages