Resumen de Yan Fu, John Seeley and constitutional discourses in modern China: A study in comparative political thought

C.K.Y. Shaw

• This article examines Yan Fu's contribution to the formation of a new political language in China between 1895 and 1905, with due attention to the intellectual and linguistic contexts of the time. The primary objects of analysis are Yan's commentaries of The Spirit of the Laws, and especially his pamphlet Lectures on Politics, which he adapted from John Seeley's Introduction to Political Science. The genre of adaptation makes it possible to interpret Yan's intention and the formation of his constitutional vocabulary with great precision. I demonstrate that Yan synthesizes Seeley's concepts of 'government by assembly' and 'government of the minority by the majority' into a single idea of the constitutional state. This is the first comprehensive Chinese discourse of constitutionalism solidly grounded on nineteenth-century British political science.