Revolutions and the transmutation of the East Asian interstate system: The Meiji Restoration, the Kapsin Coup and the regulation system

The confrontation between the tribute system and the treaty system in modern East Asia is generally understood as the latter emerging upon the former's collapse. This study proposes the existence and practice of the "regulation system," a transfigured form of the tribute system before the establishment of the treaty system.; Between 1868 and 1875 the new Meiji government in Japan demanded that Choson Korea reestablish diplomatic relations with Japan, an attempt to enhance the international position of Japan, historically an isolated and inferior state in the East Asian interstate order, by using international law. Rejected by Korea, which sensed the possible confusion of interstate hierarchy, Meiji Japan turned to Qing China for a Western-style treaty relationship. Wishing to make Japan an "outer support" in its competition with the Western powers, China still found the idea of interstate equality unacceptable. Thus the "Sino-Japanese amity regulations" were concluded on the premise that regulations, unlike treaties, should be concluded by states in hierarchical relationships.; "The Sino-Corean Regulations, 1882" marked the completion of the regulation system. This agreement was intended to demonstrate Korea's status as a Chinese "dependency," despite Korea's belief that its treaty relations with Western countries substantiated its status as an "independent state." Korea and Japan's respective "equal" treaty relationships with Western powers and subordinate positions to China due to the regulations automatically ranked China above the Western states. China created the regulation system by incorporating the treaty system into the tribute system as a means of establishing itself as the master of the world.; Deprived of the autonomy that it had enjoyed in the tribute system, Korea fell prey to the new, quasi-colonialistic interstate order. The Kapsin coup in 1884 was the culmination of the Korean radical modernizers' protests to China. The coup should be regarded as a "de-Sinicizing revolution" in that it not only attempted to reform "premodern" domestic systems of governance in Korea but also challenged the regulation system. Its failure consolidated the regulation system, impaired Korea's potential for internal development when its kaehwa and reformation efforts were most crucial, and precipitated the country's colonization by Japan. The regulation system eventually collapsed with China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895.