Law, Empire, and Historiography of Modern Sino-Western Relations: A Case Study of theLady HughesControversy in 1784

Abstract

From 1843 to 1943, the regime of extraterritoriality in China operated to exempt not just diplomats but also other citizens of Western empires from Chinese law and jurisdiction without granting the Chinese in the West reciprocal privileges. This was a milestone in international law and relations; it also had a long-lasting impact on the trajectories of modern Chinese history. On the one hand, the Treaties of Nanking (Nanjing) in 1842 and Bogue (Humen) in 1843, signed in the aftermath of the First Opium War (1839–42), marked the first institutionalization of British extraterritorial privileges in East Asia. Through treaties in 1844, the United States and France also secured such privileges in China and established their imperial prestige in the Asia-Pacific. These practices prompted revision of international law treatises and set the pattern for Western dealings with Asian countries for the century to come. On the other hand, from the late nineteenth century on, attempts to abolish foreign extraterritoriality continued to be a most powerful rallying call among the Chinese to “modernize”/“Westernize” their legal and political systems to regain sovereignty and international respectability.