East Asia Before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute (Contemporary Asia in the World) Paperback – October 9, 2012

Agree with the one reviewer who criticized the style points, but readers must recall that this is an academic work and the repetetiveness is part of the style of presentation. I ultimately disagree with much of the author's thesis, but he has anticipated many of my objections and dealt with them clearly in the text. I will not use this space to review them as I am working on a less academic "rebuttal" of sorts.

This is a subject matter I'm fascinated about, so he couldn't go wrong informing me of the historical facts. My only issue is with his writing style - he repeats himself over and over again. He'll write a sentence saying the same thing two or five paragraphs down the line, after which you just want to slap him and go, "you've already said that!". The writing can also get a little long-winded, but I suppose that's a common feature of books written by academics.As an avid history buff, the story he tells is interesting. I only had a vague understanding of inter-Asian relationships of the past, so I can say I'm a little bit more educated about the matter now. He focuses primarily on the three sinicized societies (Korea, Vietnam and Japan) plus China itself, which helps make it succinct. It's also mainly about Chinese relations with the other three, which I suppose makes sense since East Asia back then pretty much revolved around it. He gets a litte bit into the Korean-Japanese dynamic, though I would've liked more. More in-depth info on the interactions between the non-China three would've been nice, especially Vietnam's discourse with Japan and Korea.All in all I would recommend it, and it's also comparatively short and makes for a quick read.

An outstanding narrative on 6 centuries of East Asian history that Viet-Nam, China, Korea, and Japan fought only 2 wars among themselves. In comparison, the author mentioned numerous conflicts in Europe among the various states. Even in our American century (20th), we seen American blood spilled in the Philippines, WWII in the Pacific, Korea, and Viet-Nam.

This is certainly an interesting and informative work. The thesis, which focuses on the historical tendency of an East Asia with a strong China to lean towards hegemonic peace is interesting and worth serious consideration though the jury is out on how accurate it is. More than this, Kang is right to challenge the Eurocentric bias towards theories of International Relations, which is largely built on European/Western cases. The book is also interesting as history, especially the conceptualization and formation of states in East Asia, their trade patterns and the differences between states and the tribal/nomadic groups that bordered East Asia. I felt his explanation could have been stronger with regards to this last count and he could have given a more full description of these nomadic entities. The differences between the Ming and Qing could have been highlighted more. Finally, more attention could have been given to the states of Southeast Asia, their role in the East Asian system, and the nature of those states. All in all, this was a strong book nonetheless though it could have added a few things.

A brief and engaging book about the diplomatic relationship and shared Confucian relation system between the four East Asian states in the early modern period.

Extremely clarifying for the fine points of the order of importance of the different tributes received by China.A very fair view of this matter in relation to the europeans.