Ryukyuan missions to Imperial China

Ryukyuan missions to Imperial China were diplomatic missions which were intermittently sent from the Ryukyuan kings to the Ming and Qing emperors. These diplomatic contacts were within the Sinocentric system of bilateral and multinational relationships in East Asia. A total of 347 Ryukyuan missions to China have been recorded.[1]

History

King Satto of Chūzan established formal relations with China in 1374. Satto became the first Ryukyuan king to send a mission to China. He was also the first to receive investiture and to submit to Chinese suzerainty in 1372.[2]

The Ming and Qing archival records identify the Ryukyu Islands among the "unconquered barbarian countries" rather than among China's colonies. The Ryukyuan missions to China were managed by the Reception Department of the Board of Ceremonies rather than by some other Imperial bureau or agency.[3]

The 500-years old tributary missions ended in the late 19th century when the Sinocentric tributary state system was superseded by the Westphalian multi-state system,[4] i.e. in 1875 during the forced annexation period of the Ryukyu Kingdom (then Ryukyu Domain) by the Empire of Japan.[5]

See also

• Imperial Chinese missions to Ryūkyū Kingdom
• Foreign relations of Imperial China
• Ryukyuan missions to Joseon
• Joseon missions to Ryūkyū Kingdom
• Ryukyuan missions to Edo
• Japanese missions to Ryūkyū Kingdom
• Ryūkyū-kan
• Kōchi Chōjō

Notes

1. Hendrickx 2007, p. 42.
2. Kerr, George H. (1965). Okinawa, the History of an Island People, p. 63., p. 63–65, at Google Books
3. Kerr, p. 67., p. 67, at Google Books
4. Kang, David C. (2010). East Asia Before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute, p. 160., p. 160, at Google Books
5. Hendrickx 2007, p. 56–57.

References

• Kang, David C. (2010). East Asia Before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute. New York : Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231153188; OCLC 562768984
• Hendrickx, Katrien (2007), The Origins of Banana-fibre Cloth in the Ryukyus, Japan, Leuven University Press, ISBN 978-90-5867-614-6
• Kerr, George H. (1965). Okinawa, the History of an Island People. Rutland, Vermont: C.E. Tuttle Co. OCLC 39242121

Further reading

• Goodrich, Luther Carrington and Zhaoying Fang. (1976). Dictionary of Ming biography, 1368-1644 (明代名人傳), Vol. I; Dictionary of Ming biography, 1368-1644 (明代名人傳), Vol. II. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231038010; OCLC 1622199
• Mizuno, Norihito. (2003). China in Tokugawa Foreign Relations: The Tokugawa Bakufu’s Perception of and Attitudes toward Ming-Qing China, p. 109. excerpt from Japan and Its East Asian Neighbors: Japan's Perceptionf of China and Korea and the Making of Foreign Policy from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century, Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 2004, as cited in Tsutsui, William M. (2009). A Companion to Japanese History, p. 83.
• Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2002). Japan Encyclopedia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-01753-5; OCLC 48943301
• Suganuma, Unryu. (2000). Sovereign Rights and Territorial Space in Sino-Japanese Relations: Irredentism and the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 9780824821593; OCLC 170955369
• Toby, Ronald P. (1991). [https://books.google.com/books?id=2hK7tczn2QoC State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan: Asia in the Development of the Tokugawa Bakufu. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-1951-3
• Yoda, Yoshiie. (1996). The Foundations of Japan's Modernization: a comparison with China's Path towards Modernization. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 978-9-004-09999-9; OCLC 246732011