Chinese world order : traditional China's foreign relations

This volume deals with an ambiguous, multi-cultural, and multi-biblio graphic subject, which has consequently lent itself to development through panels and symposia: first, a session on "The Traditional International Order in East Asia" at the 1963 meeting of the Association for Asian Philadelphia; later, a session on "The Chinese World Order" at the 1965 meeting of the American Historical Association in San Fran cisco. Messrs. Fairbank, Farquhar, Fletcher, Mancall, and Wills partici pated in both these panels. However, the essays and case studies now. presented in this volume were principally discussed in a week-long con ference at Endicott House, the estate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Dedham, Massachusetts, in September 1965. This prolonged and systematic interchange among scholars from several countries per mitted the making of many comparisons and agreement on many defini tions of terms. This in turn produced a degree of consensus on several points but also inspired considerable reworking of the papers.

We wish to record our particular indebtedness to Professor Shinobu Iwamura, presently director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University, who took time from his duties in this field to join us in his older role as a specialist in Mongol studies. The conference rapporteur, Professor David Hamilton of the Department of History at the University of Iowa, made a signal contribution to the clarity and consistency of our formulations, and the special editor of this volume, Mrs. Elizabeth Mac Leod Matheson, has brought into a common order researches of very dis parate backgrounds. This conference as a year-long enterprise was made possible by the support of the Ford Foundation.