Abstract
This chapter examines East and Southeast Asian monarchy in comparative perspective. Much recent thinking, particularly about contemporary monarchy, has developed from the history of European (and to a lesser extent African) monarchies. Indeed, European scholars have long contrasted the limited character of European kingship from the putatively more absolutist forms found elsewhere, especially East Asia and the Islamic world. This chapter suggests that the category of limited monarchy—now embodied in the idea of a constitutional monarchy—is much more extensive and was in fact ubiquitous in East Asia history. True absolutism is more a modern than ancient phenomenon. Thinking about the origins, survival and functions of monarchy today allows us to see how East Asian ideas—from China, Japan, and Southeast Asia—have shaped the survival of monarchy in this part of the world, with potential to inform our understanding of the phenomenon more generally.
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Notes
- 1.
See Appendix.
- 2.
I exclude the Pacific Islands partly for lack of expertise but also because it lacks the longstanding and routinized exchanges with China that characterize the countries of East and Southeast Asia.
- 3.
The eight are Brunei, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Kuwait. Eswatini is the last absolute monarchy outside the Muslim world and lacks oil.
- 4.
Gerring, John, Tore Wig, Wouter Veenendaal W., Daniel Weitzel, Jan Teorell and Kyosuke Kikuta. 2021. “Why Monarchy? The Rise and Demise of a Regime Type,” Comparative Political Studies 54(3–4): 585–622.
- 5.
James Frazer, The Golden Bough (1890) at 138–39.
- 6.
David Graeber and Marshall Sahlins, On Kings (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015).
- 7.
Princess Toshi was born in 2001, but that led to national debate over whether the Imperial Household Law of 1947 had to be revised in order to allow a female to take the throne. When the Masako’s brother-in-law Akishino and his wife gave birth to a son Hisahito in 2006, the controversy was laid to rest. Somewhat uncomfortably for the Graeber-Sahlins theory, Hisahito is believed not to be merely sacred but a descendant of the divine.
- 8.
Montesquieu believed that the ideal was “a constitution that has all the internal advantages of republican government and the external force of monarchy. I speak of the federal republic.” Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws 1748 [1989]: Book 1. 10.
- 9.
David Hume, Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations (1752).
- 10.
Gordon Tullock, On Autocracy (Springer, 1985).
- 11.
The early Ottoman sultanate engaged in the practice of murdering all males in the family save one, once the heir succeeded to the throne. But Favereau notes this precise maneuver by the Mongol khan Batu introduced an unraveling of his rule. Marie Favereau, The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).
- 12.
Marie Faverau, ibid. One could add the Vatican since the eleventh century to the list.
- 13.
Alvin Roth and X. Xing. 1994. “Jumping the Gun: Imperfections and Institutions Related to the Timing of Market Transactions,” American Economic Review 84: 992–1044.
- 14.
James Fearon, “Rationalist Explanations for War,” International Organization 49(3): 379–414 (1995); See George Tridimas “Constitutional Monarchy as Power Sharing,” Constitutional Political Economy 32: 431–61 (2021) for an application to monarchy.
- 15.
Adam Przeworski, et al. “The Origins of Parliamentary Responsibility.” Chapter. In Comparative Constitutional Design, edited by Tom Ginsburg, 101–37 (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
- 16.
Douglass C. North and Barry R. Weingast. “Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England,” The Journal of Economic History 49(4): 803–32 (1989).
- 17.
Deborah Boucayannis Kings as Judges (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
- 18.
Barry Weingast, “Self-Enforcing Constitutions: With an Application to Democratic Stability In America’s First Century.”
- 19.
Joseph Chan, “Democracy and Meritocracy: Toward a Confucian Perspective,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 34: 186 (2007).
- 20.
Loubna El Amine, Classical Confucian Political Thought: A New Interpretation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015).
- 21.
- 22.
El Amine, ibid. at 39–41 she argues that the Mencius prefers hereditary succession.
- 23.
Sungmoon Kim, “Confucian Constitutionalism: Mencius and Xunzi on Virtue, Ritual, and Royal Transmission,” Review of Politics 11: 73 (2011).
- 24.
Records of the Grand Historian (Shi Ji 史记); Bamboo Annals (Zhu Shu Ji Nian 竹书纪年).
- 25.
Dí Zháng Zî 嫡长子.
- 26.
Zhen Yang, “On the Power of the Crown Prince in Qing Dynasty,” Studies in Qing History 4 (2002). The four main principles of the secret reserve system are: (1) The emperor has total control over whom to choose (2) The emperor considers both merit and primogeniture (3) The emperor is secretly fostering and evaluating the chosen heir. (4) The chosen heir must be kept from knowing his position. This latter provision was necessary both to prevent unraveling, in which the heir might seek to hasten the emperor’s death, and also to prevent infighting, because no one would know the heir until the day that they assume the throne. It bears remarkable similarity to the modern system of the dedazo, by which Mexican presidents in the PRI chose their successors.
- 27.
Yuhua Wang, The Rise and Fall of Imperial China (Princeton University Press, 2022) provides novel evidence for the gradual substitution of officials who were appointed on merit, on the basis of an examination, for those who came from noble families.
- 28.
Mencius 2B.2; see El Amine 2015: 56.
- 29.
Tongdong Bai, “How Has China Become a Despotic State?” (中国是如何成为专制国家的).
- 30.
Ela Amine 119.
- 31.
Xunzi 27.69.
- 32.
Rosemont, State and Society in the Xunzi.
- 33.
Merideth E. Cameron, The Reform Movement in China, 1898–1912 (1974); Meienberger, Norbert, The Emergence of Constitutional Government in China (1905–1908): The Concept Sanctioned by the Empress Dowager Tzʻu-hs (1980). Jie Cheng. “Why Late Qing Constitutional Reform failed: An Examination from the Comparative Institutional Perspective,” Tsinghua China Law Review 10(107): 108–44 (2017).
- 34.
Cecil Brett, “The Priest Emperor Concept in Japanese Political Thought,” Indian Journal of Political Science 23: 17–28 (1962).
- 35.
Nobushige Hozumi, Ancestor Worship and Japanese Law (Tokyo: XX Press, 1912) at 73.
- 36.
Emiko Ohnukii-Tierney, “Japanese Monarchy in Historical and Comparative Perspective,” in Declan Quigley, ed. The Character of Kingship (New York: Berg, 2005), 209–32.
- 37.
Emiko Ohnukii-Tierney, “Japanese Monarchy in Historical and Comparative Perspective,” in Declan Quigley, ed. The Character of Kingship (New York: Berg, 2005), 209–32.
- 38.
Hajime Nakamura, History of Japanese Thought: 592–1868: Japanese Philosophy Before Western Culture Entered Japan 8 (2002).
- 39.
Masaharu Anesaki, “The Foundation of Buddhist Culture in Japan: The Buddhist Ideals as Conceived and Carried Out by the Prince Regent Shotoku,” Monumenta Nipponica 6: 1–12 (1943). Other sutras emphasized in Japan included that of the Golden Light, promoted by the Emperor Temmu in 673. He instituted national practice of Buddhism and subsequent emperor Shomu undertook image building programs that fused government and religion.
- 40.
Jeffrey Mass, The Kamakura Bakufu (1976); Tom Ginsburg, “Constitutionalism: East Asian Antecedents,” Chicago-Kent Law Review 88: 11–33 (2012).
- 41.
Const Japan (1889), preamble; Art. 1.
- 42.
Robert Heine-Geldern, Conceptions of State and Kingship in Southeast Asia (Cornell University. Southeast Asia Program. Data Paper. Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program Publications, 1993).
- 43.
Andrew Huxley, “The Buddha and the Social Contract” Journal of Indian Philosophy 24: 407 (1996). Collins, Steven, “The Lion’s Roar on the Wheel-Turning King: A Response to Andrew Huxley’s ‘The Buddha and the Social Contract’,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 24: 421–46 (1996).
- 44.
Qin Zhi Lau, Ideals of Buddhist Kingship: A Comparative Analysis of Emperors Asoka and Wen of Sui, UC Santa Barbara working paper, available at https://www.history.ucsb.edu/wp-content/uploads/Ideals_Buddhist_Kingship.pdf; James A. Benn and Stephanie Balkwill, Buddhist Statecraft in East Asia (Brill, 2022).
- 45.
Patrick Jory, 2016. Thailand’s Theory of Monarchy: The Vessantara Jataka and the Idea of the Perfect Man (Albany: SUNY Press).
- 46.
Lingat 1941: 26–31; Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit, “Thammasat, Custom, and Royal Authority in Siam’s Legal History,” Thai Legal History: From Traditional to Modern Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).
- 47.
Eugénie Mérieau, Constitutional Bricolage 36 (Brill: 2022).
- 48.
Mérieau at 38.
- 49.
Eugénie Mérieau, Constitutional Bricolage (Brill: 2022).
- 50.
Wasana Wongsurawat, The Crown and the Capitalists: The Ethnic Chinese and the Founding of the Thai Nation (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019).
- 51.
Const. Thailand Art. 2.
- 52.
Thongchai Winichakul, Siam Mapped (University of Hawai’i Press, 1994).
- 53.
Søren Ivarsson Ivarsson, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, and Lotte Isager. Saying the Unsayable: Monarchy and Democracy in Thailand. NIAS Studies in Asian Topics (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2010); Paul Handley, The King Never Smiles: A Biography of Thailand's Bhumibol Adulyadej (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).
- 54.
G. Braighlinn, Ideological Innovation under Monarchy: Aspects of Legitimation Activity in Contemporary Brunei (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1992). Contemporary Asian Studies Monograph No. 9, at 4.
- 55.
Braighlinn, note 54, at 19.
- 56.
Braighlinn note 54, at 30.
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Ginsburg, T. (2023). East Asian Monarchy in Comparative Perspective. In: Wang, Z. (eds) The Long East Asia. Governing China in the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8784-7_8
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