Imperial Geography and Fatherly Benevolence. The Chinese World Order and the Construction of its Margins

This chapter analyses geographic concepts and ideas, and their influence on concrete actions in Ming China (14th–17th c.). Outlining the basic traits of Chinese world order, in which the Emperor (or rather the ‘Son of Heaven’) claimed to rule over the whole world, it discusses the influence of a geographic order that focused on society and culture as being situated at the centre of the world and at once identical with the centre of civilization. Drawing on Chinese sources on Southeast Asia, this chapter demonstrates, how this order could still provide for interactions with foreign rulers that were based on privileges and a tributary system: Chinese concepts of order included foreign peoples by assigning them specific places and obligations according to categories that included their geographical location or their political proximity to the empire. As a consequence, the diplomatic ritual was shaped according to these basic assumptions, as a choice of exemplary cases shows. The cosmological order of the empire, i.e. of the whole inhabited world, was put into action.