East Asia's Influence on the Universalization of European International Law

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The main purpose of the present project was to clarify the role of East Asia in the process of universalization of European international law, which had two phases. The first was the phase where, until the first half of the Nineteenth century, the real sphere of application of European international law was limited to Europe itself and thus the universalization, under East Asia's influence, of European international law remained purely theoretical. The second phase comes in the latter half of the Nineteenth century, where the real sphere of application of European international law extended to East Asia, where European international law went through changes because of the practice of international law in European diplomacy with East Asian powers.As to the issues related to the first phase, quite a few historical documents have been collected to clarify the influence of East Asia on European international law since well before the intensification of intercourse between European and East Asian powers. Work of analysis and academic writing must be pursued and finished as soon as possible.As to the issues related to the second phase of East Asia's influence on European international law, the question is not how international law changes East Asian relations, but how its application in East Asia affected European international law which had a civilizational bias until then. It is assumed that rules of European international law must have been modified into universally applicable and acceptable norms, but there had not been sufficient collection yet of diplomatic documents to prove this assumption. It became apparent that, in order to get the full perspective of the process in question, Russian diplomacy in the Nineteenth century must be taken in consideration ; which is mostly the reason why this research is not concluded yet in the form of a book publication as expected.