24 Law and Morality Abroad (to ca. ad 1550)and of the will of individual princes. On this basis, legalism may be seen
as a stark forerunner of what Eu ro pe ans would (much) later know as
positivism.
Regarding international aff airs, legalism was thoroughly in tune with the
realities of the Chinese interstate system of the Warring States period. Its
world was one of resolutely in de pen dent states, locked in perpetual rivalry
with one another. Legalism altogether rejected cosmopolitan ideas of uni-
versal law or morality, or anything smacking of what would later be called
natural- law thought. Relations between states were seen as determined by
power and not by abstract ethical theories or customary practices. Chinese
legalism, in short, presented the fi rst forthright theory of absolute state sov-
ereignty and was the fi rst body of writing in what later Westerners would
call the tradition of realism.
Considering the Chinese experience generally, there can be no doubt
that, of the three cultural areas under consideration, it made the greatest
advances in the direction of international law. Th is was true in terms of the
richness of its state practice and also of the doctrinal writing that it pro-
duced. At the same time, though, it can hardly be said that preimperial
China actually had anything like an eff ective system of international law.
For one thing, it is questionable whether the term “law” is really an apt term
at all to describe relations between states in the preimperial Chinese system.
One commentator, for example, has been unwilling to concede to the Chi-
nese anything more than “a certain uniformity of state behavior patterns,”
amounting, in reality, to “little more than patterns of con ve nience in a power
struggle.”
Moreover, it appears that, in practice, Chinese rulers were quick to depart
from the principles expounded by the writers when they believed their ma-
terial interests to be at stake. Treaties appear to have been broken with a fair
degree of frequency, with little or no evidence of remorse on the part of the
rulers concerned. Major powers in par tic u lar appear to have been fre-
quently lacking in the benevolence expected of them by high- minded writ-
ers such as Mencius. Th ey had few compunctions about acting according
their own perceived self- interest rather than in obedience to some generally
applicable scheme of rules. Where the rule of law functioned most eff ec-
tively was within leagues of states, relatively small groupings formed for
mutual self- protection. In the wider Chinese world— to say nothing of rela-