Columbia International Affairs Online
CIAO DATE: 6/5/2007
Reimagining International Society Through the Emergence of Japanese Imperialism
November 2003
Australian National University Department of International Relations
Abstract
In the not too distant past Timothy Dunne asserted that ‘[International] society is what states have made of it’.2 Since then much has been written about how the English School offers a valuable interpretivist approach, how it has spread across the world, how it can be improved, and what it has to say about non-European societies and ‘world society’.3 This paper aims to contribute to all three facets of the debate through a case study of how the Japanese elite understood international society during the bakumatsu (late-Tokugawa)/early-Meiji periods (1853–95). In doing so, it examines the emergence of Japanese imperialism from the perspective of international society as perceived by English School scholars.
