Sovereignty in China

Author Bio

Maria Adele Carrai is a sinologist and political scientist with an interest in conceptual history and the history of international law. She is currently a recipient of a three-year Marie Curie Fellowship at KU Leuven and a Fellow at the Harvard University Asia Center. Carrai has published in various peer-reviewed journals. Her first book, Sovereignty in China: A Genealogy of a Concept Since 1840(Cambridge University Press, 2019), provides a historical perspective through which to better understand the path China is taking as a normative actor within the international order. Relying on her previous work, her new research project investigates how China’s rise as a global power is shaping norms and is redefining the international distribution of power. Carrai completed her Ph.D. in Law at the University of Hong Kong. She was a Research Fellow at Columbia University’s Italian Academy, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program, a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute, and a Global Hauser Fellow at the New York University Law School.

Cambridge University Press: This book provides a comprehensive history of the emergence and formation of the concept of sovereignty in China from 1840 to the present. It contributes to broadening the history of modern China by looking at the way the notion of sovereignty was gradually articulated by key Chinese intellectuals, diplomats, and political figures in the unfolding of the history of international law in China, rehabilitates Chinese agency, and shows how China challenged Western Eurocentric assumptions about the progress of international law. It puts the history of international law in a global perspective, interrogating the widely-held belief of international law as universal order, and exploring the ways in which its history is closely anchored to a European experience that fails to take into account how the encounter with other non-European realities has influenced its formation.