1 - What Is the East?

Summary

This chapter advances a new and non-Eurocentric theoretical framework for understanding the concepts of 'sovereignty' and 'world order' in international relations. Before the West is focused on a particular type of sovereignty – labelled Chinggisid sovereignty – which was influential throughout parts of Asia from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuriess. This understanding of sovereignty was extremely centralised around the person of the ruler and was legitimated by the notion of world empire. The empire of Genghis Khan disseminated this sovereignty norm and its associated institutions across Asia. Before the West thus argues that Asia was dominated by world-ordering projects in this Chinggisid mould from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, and their loss (as well the connections they facilitated) contributed to the perception of ‘the decline of the East’ from the seventeenth century onwards, even though Asia was not surpassed materially by the West until much later. This reconstructed grand narrative of the history of Asian International Relations also has significant implications for contemporary debates on crisis and decline.