China and the Political Upheavals in Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and Persia: Non-Western Influences on Constitutional Thinking in Late Imperial China, 1893-1911

Research about Sino-foreign cultural interactions during the last decades of the Qing Empire pays much attention to the extremely dense and complex relations between Japan and China. Against this backdrop, historians have tended to neglect that the Chinese “constitutional preparation” of the years 1905-06 was concomitant to the promulgation of constitutional documents in other thitherto absolutist countries such as Russia, the Ottoman Empire and Persia. This paper shows that, during the whole period of “constitutional preparation”, the Qing government, media and intellectuals remained well aware of these events

The 22 Frimaire of Yuan Shikai: Privy councils in the constitutional architectures of Japan and China, 1887–1917

Privy councils are among the most traditional, yet least conspicuous forms of collective decision-making in modern states. However, using the example of East Asia, this chapter shows that, far from being a moribund relic of the pre-constitutional past, advisory councils to the head of state were a highly productive global element of constitution-building which was variously adapted according to local needs and conditions. The architecture of the Napoleonic Constitution of 22 Frimaire, which complemented the executive ministers of state with an additional Council of State and came to be underpinned by the idea of a “neutral” or “moderating” branch of government, promised attractive advantages to the makers of East Asia’s first modern constitutions. The Japanese Privy Council (Sūmitsuin) alleviated the dangers of putting too much power into the hands of the Emperor, while also securing the power of the ruling oligarchy in a context of mistrust of the legislative branch. The Sūmitsuin served as a model for both the Qing Empire and the Republic of China, although the political objectives attached to the respective advisory councils diverged significantly. Eventually, both in Japan and in China, the institution was abolished when it had become too closely connected with authoritarian politics

Creating a Constitutional Absolute Monarchy: Li Jiaju, Dashou, and Late Qing Interpretations of the Japanese Parliament

This paper explores interpretations of the Japanese parliament by governmental actors in the Qing empire, most importantly the commissioners for constitutional research Li Jiaju 李家駒 (1871–1938) and Dashou 達壽 (1870–1939). It shows that, within a theoretical framework formed in dialogue with their Japanese constitutionalist colleagues, these actors came to understand the Japanese parliament as an organ possessing tightly limited attributions gifted by the emperor. They maintained that the constitutional system should not be parliamentary, although the parliament was one of its necessary elements. Rather, it should be based on an imperially authorised constitutional document and a form of government centred on the figure of the emperor, in which the parliament would play a consultative rather than legislative role. Ultimately, the article shows that, within a Eurasia-wide wave of imperial transformation in which officials envisioned parliaments mainly as organs designed to increase governmental efficiency, political actors like Li Jiaju and Dashou creatively adapted categories of political science to their own political needs

Late Qing parliamentarism and the borderlands of the Qing Empire—Mongolia, Tibet, and Xinjiang (1906–1911)

The article examines the relationship between the late Qing constitutional movement of 1905–1911 and the vast borderland regions of the Qing Empire–that is, Mongolia, Tibet, and Xinjiang. It traces how intellectuals and officials concerned with devising constitutional policies foresaw the integration of these regions into the nascent parliamentary institutions at the provincial and central levels. The article argues that the status of the borderlands played a significant role in late Qing constitutional debates, and that debates on borderland constitutionalism were a phenomenon of a wider constitutional wave affecting Eurasia in the 1900s. Chinese intellectuals and officials felt the competition of the emerging parliamentary institutions in Russia and the Ottoman Empire, and anticipating that constitutional and parliamentarist movements among Mongols, Tibetans, and Turki could lead to the separation of the respective regions, they hoped that parliamentary representation, albeit limited, would be an instrument against centrifugal tendencies on the borders. Hence, they called for constitutional reforms in China and for the inclusion of the borderland populations into the new parliamentary institutions. Yet, arguing with the sparse population of the borderlands as well as with their alleged economic and cultural backwardness, they denied the direct application of the constitutional plan to these territories. The differentiated policies eventually applied to the borderlands were a lackluster compromise between these conflicting interests

O Barão de Rothschild e a questão do Acre

O autor reconstitui a criação do estado brasileiro do Acre, ressaltando os interesses estrangeiros subjacentes à disputa com a Bolívia. O protocolo pelo qual a Bolívia arrendava o território ao Bolivian Syndicate e a disposição de Rio Branco em reivindicar aquela região para o Brasil colocavam os dois países em rota de colisão. Nesse contexto surge a figura dúbia do Barão de Rothschild que propõe uma solução pacífica para o dissídio através do arbitramento da Grã Bretanha.The author reconstructs the history of the Brazilian state of Acre, emphasizing foreign interests which were underneath the quarrel between Brazil and Bolivia. Tension increased in the region because, on the one hand, Bolivia rented the land to the Bolivian Syndicate, an anglo-american company, and on the other hand, the Brazilian Foreign Affairs Minister, Rio Branco, decided to claim sovereignty over the territory. The ambivalent Rothschild comes up in this setting, defending a peaceful solution through the arbitration of Great Britain

Introduction

Parliaments are often seen as institutions peculiar to the Euro-American world. In contrast, their establishment elsewhere is frequently thought of as a derivative and mostly defective process. Such simplistic tales of unilateral and imperfect transfers of knowledge have led to a suboptimal understanding of non-Western experiences, as well as of their contribution to the shaping of the global political landscape of the modern world. The present volume challenges Eurocentric visions by retracing the evolution of modern institutions of collective decision-making in Eurasia, more specifically in the Russian/Soviet, Qing/Chinese, Japanese, and Ottoman/Turkish cases. It argues that, over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, intellectuals and political actors across Eurasia used indigenous as well as foreign elements to shape their versions of parliamentary institutions for their own political purposes. It was through the creative agency of these often understudied actors that representative institutions have acquired a wide range of meanings throughout Eurasia and become a near-ubiquitous element of modern statehood