Why Treaties Matter: The Economic And Cultural Effects Of Nineteenth Century Treaties In China, Japan, And Korea

Abstract

Conventional views on state-formation examined within nation political and resource constraints to assess changes that took place. In my dissertation, I explored how external stressors such as international treaties affected domestic legal reforms. By creating a dataset of 235 treaties involving European, Asian, North American, and South American states, I juxtaposed the restructuring process of three Asian countries - China, Japan, and Korea to global trends in trading and diplomacy. I used Chisquare tests of variance to deduce that geographic origins of the treaty partners affected the types of treaties signed and the level of symmetries for treaties. The year of when the treaties were signed also had an effect. Further, treaties tended towards mutual benefits around the early 20th century as cross-regional tensions declined. By the end of the 19th century, treaties specified to form categories such as arbitrage, consular, delimitation, and extradition treaties. China, Japan, and Korea's varied turns in the 20th century address how even if external partners approached a nation with asymmetric levels of power, the way in which a nation addressed these provocations mattered. In times of external threats, a nation, restructuring its political and social infrastructures prevented the nation from losing its domestic sovereignty.