Indigenizing International Law in Early Twentieth-Century China: Territorial Sovereignty in the Sino-Tibetan Borderland

Abstract

In 1864, the Zongli Yamen (Board of Foreign Affairs) distributed 300 copies of a new book of “western learning” to provincial magistrates across the Qing Empire. The book, Wanguo gongfa (The Public Law of All States), was the first comprehensive introduction to Euro-American international law translated into Chinese. Its principal translator, W.A.P. Martin, was an American missionary who by the end of the nineteenth century would serve as professor of international law at the Imperial College (Tongwen guan) in Beijing, an institution attached to the Zongli Yamen.2 With the establishment of the Zongli Yamen in