Recentering the World

'China's engagement with Western international law, Ryan Martínez Mitchell shows in this field-defining study, is neither recent nor rejectionist. Instead, starting in the 19th century, Chinese actors interacted with once foreign concepts and terms in light of local imaginaries, and Chinese engagement reshaped international law in turn. The results are a tour de force of research and reconceptualization of how the legal order of the contemporary world came about, and where alternative global internationalisms might one day lead.' Samuel Moyn, Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and History, Yale University 'Recentering the World is a wonderful book that should re-center how we think about not only China but international law itself. Running from the late Qing through WTO accession, Ryan Mitchell's singular blend of deep historical research in Chinese, Japanese and western archival materials, deft legal analysis, and love of ideas is an exemplar of superb cross-disciplinary scholarship.' William P. Alford, Jerome A. and Joan L. Cohen Professor of East Asian Legal Studies, Harvard Law School 'An excellent conceptual history of how China engaged with Western-made international law in the late 19th and 20th centuries. Mitchell moves fluidly between domestic and transnational spheres of thought, and between different layers of conceptual meaning as they are constantly reconstructed during this era.' Taisu Zhang, Professor of Law, Yale Law School and author of The Ideological Foundations of Qing Taxation (2022)