Publications by Amanda Cheney
How did Tibet become part of the modern Chinese state? Even today, as Tibet is an internationally... more How did Tibet become part of the modern Chinese state? Even today, as Tibet is an internationally recognized part of the People’s Republic of China, the evasive meaning of “Chinese suzerainty over Tibet” is a reverberant point of contention in nationalist debates. The question of whether “suzerainty” more strongly implicates Tibetan independence or Chinese sovereignty is a false controversy that has impeded progress in understanding China’s transition from empire to nation-state. This article examines Anglo-Chinese diplomatic negotiations following the 1904 British invasion of Tibet using newly uncovered Chinese archival documents to demonstrate the central role played by the appropriation and manipulation of international legal discourse in determining Tibet’s status in the international system and offers a generalizable theory of the mechanics of international order transformation.
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Invited Talks by Amanda Cheney
Diplomatic (Mis)translation and Empire Misreadings and Manipulation in Sino-British Dealings with... more Diplomatic (Mis)translation and Empire Misreadings and Manipulation in Sino-British Dealings with Tibet
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Conference Presentations and Working Papers by Amanda Cheney
Transformation in the nature of international order has been described by International Relations... more Transformation in the nature of international order has been described by International Relations theorists as the most disruptive type of change in international relations. Although it entails change in the nature of actors that constitute an international system, the processes by which international order is transformed on the unit level have not been adequately addressed by existing scholarship. This paper considers what factors determine the survival of individual polities following a transformation in international order by examining the status of Tibet after the collapse of East Asia’s historical Sinocentric world order, but before the establishment of the contemporary global state system. Specifically, it focuses on the 1914 Simla Convention between Great Britain, China and Tibet which (unsuccessfully) sought to formally define Tibet’s post-Sinosphere status through diplomatic negotiation, relying on a close reading of Chinese and English diplomatic records. Contrary to conventional wisdom that resolution was unattainable because of conflicting boundary claims, I find that England and Tibet were outmaneuvered by China’s shrewd instrumentalization of international legal discourse, which forestalled any concrete definition of the nature of China’s authority in Tibet. This research reveals that through the appropriation and manipulation of international legal discourse, individual actors possess a high degree of agency within the transformation of international order.
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China’s behavior in the South China Sea is widely viewed as an important indicator of the fate of... more China’s behavior in the South China Sea is widely viewed as an important indicator of the fate of international order. As disputes escalate in real time, observers tend to focus on policy-oriented questions, particularly how historical ambiguities, radical land reclamation projects and freedom of navigation operations stand up in international law. However, these perspectives have not adequately addressed the relationship between the instrumentalization of international law and transformation of international order. This paper examines the appropriation of international legal discourse within a broader history of the evolution of international order and international society. Specifically, this paper juxtaposes China’s shift away from assertions of undisputable sovereignty to criticisms of American interpretations of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, with the intensification of “rules-based international order” in US rhetoric. I argue that the appropriation of international legal discourse is a key element of the mechanics by which international order is transformed. By closely examining theoretical questions of international order transformation, this paper reveals that the future of international order depends less on the ‘objective’ legality of specific disputes and more on how effectively actors control the narrative of legitimacy and appropriate conduct through the appropriation of international legal discourse.
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From the end of the Qing Empire to the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, Tibet’s i... more From the end of the Qing Empire to the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, Tibet’s international status and the nature of Sino-Tibetan relations were highly ambiguous. Between 1919 and 1937, there were several seemingly favorable opportunities for resolving the Tibet Question, but all of them left its status indeterminate. Existing scholarship has illustrated that both the Beiyang (1912-1928) and Nationalist Governments (1928-1949) were consumed by more pressing issues in ‘China proper’ and lacked the capacity to bring Tibet firmly within Chinese borders. Missing is a vision of why Tibet and Britain also converged on a preference for Tibetan indeterminacy. The question of Tibet’s status was a sticking point in China’s transition from empire to nation-state. However, this regional transition was part of a larger transformation of the character of the global international system. While European imperialism brought an end to the traditional East Asian world order and WWI brought an end to 19th century power politics – establishing a functional replacement system took decades. A close reading of Chinese and English diplomatic records of efforts at rapprochement between 1919-1937 reveals that Tibetan indeterminacy was not the result of a lack of capacity to bring about a more desirable outcome but the absence of a stable international system. An international system is defined by the type of entities that constitute it, but also determines the type of actors that can exist within it. As long as East Asia’s international system was indeterminate, so too was Tibet’s status.
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Podcast by Amanda Cheney
WIR
A companion podcast to Comparative International Systems, a course at Lund University, Sweden tha... more A companion podcast to Comparative International Systems, a course at Lund University, Sweden that I co-teach with Erik Ringmar where we talk about international relations from global, historical and individual perspectives. Listen at https://soundcloud.com/user-38869046
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Publications by Amanda Cheney
Invited Talks by Amanda Cheney
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Podcast by Amanda Cheney