Description
How did the use of liberalism differ between the United States and Great Britain in East Asia within the context of the early twentieth-century contest for empire? This article explores the contingent relationship between the application of liberalism and empire as distinct forms of political order in East Asia through a case study of the international court in Shanghai from 1880 to 1920. While recent studies on international order challenge the "Rise of the West" narrative by proposing alternative regional ordering principles or highlighting "universal" elements of interpolity order, this paper argues for the equal importance of understanding diverse liberal imperial practices. By focusing on the strategies employed by Western powers—Great Britain and the United States—in East Asia, it analyzes the historical, political, and legal conditions that facilitated these approaches in their respective international order-making projects drawing on the critical history of international law and the history of political thought.
