The Rise and Fall of the Rules-Based Interstate Order: Lessons from the Springs-and-Autumns China

Abstract

China witnessed numerous periods of political fragmentation, but those were invariably considered aberrations destined to end with the renewed unification of All-under-Heaven. Only once — during the Springs-and-Autumns (Chunqiu, 770–453 BCE) period — the multistate system was considered a normal state of affairs, and efforts were invested to make it fully functional. In this talk, how contemporary statesmen tried to replace interstate anarchy with the rules-based order will be explored, and why the experiments with unipolar, bipolar, and multipolar worlds all failed, leading to the war of all against all. What lessons can modern IR scholars glean from this failure? And what was the long-term impact on
China’s subsequent historical trajectory?

About the speaker

Yuri Pines is the author of nine monographs, including China’s Aristocratic Age: Politics and Power in the Springs-and-Autumns Period (Princeton, 2026) and The Everlasting Empire: The Political Culture of Ancient China and Its Imperial Legacy (Princeton, 2012). His research focuses on early Chinese political thought, traditional political culture, early historiography, and the history of pre-imperial China. He has also edited eight volumes, including The Limits of Universal Rule: Eurasian Empires Compared (Cambridge, 2021).