China's Unequal Treaties offers a study, based on primary sources, of the linguistic development and polemical uses of the expression 'Unequal Treaties' to refer to the treaties written between 1842 and 1943. Although the expression has occupied a central position in both Chinese collective memory and English historiographies, China's Unequal Treaties is the first study of the phrase and its interpretations.
Dong Wang PhD is a historian of China, U.S.-Chinese relations, geopolitics, and geoculture. She is visiting fellow at Freie Universität in Berlin, research associate at the Harvard Fairbank Center (since 2002), a member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and an elected Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Her books in English include The United States and China (2021, 2nd rev. ed. of 2013), Longmen's Stone Buddhas and Cultural Heritage (2020), Managing God's Higher Learning (2007), and China's Unequal Treaties (2005).
Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Tracing the Contours of the "Unequal Treaties" in Imperial China, 1840-1911 Chapter 3 Implementing and Contesting International Law: The "Unequal Treaties" and the Foreign Ministry of the Beijing Government, 1912-1928 Chapter 4 Disseminating the Rhetoric of Bupingdeng Tiaoyue, 1923-1927 Chapter 5 Redeeming "a Century of National Ignominy:" Nationalism and Party Rivalry over the Unequal Treaties, 1928-1947 Chapter 6 Universalizing International Law and the Chinese Study of the Unequal Treaties: The Paradox of Equality and Inequality Chapter 7 Conclusion: Defining and Redefining the Past Chapter 8 Glossary