Treaty Ports in Modern China

Edited by Robert Bickers and Isabella Jackson, this collection examines the legal and physical structures that made China’s treaty ports distinctive. Contributors study concessions, landholding, municipal government, policing, river conservancy, taxation and property, showing how foreign rights were translated into institutions embedded within Chinese cities.

The essays also emphasise negotiation and contest rather than presenting treaty ports as sealed colonial islands. Chinese officials, residents, entrepreneurs and workers shaped their development, while foreign administrations differed substantially from port to port. The book provides a detailed account of how law and urban space distributed power in the unequal-treaty era and how these arrangements affected modern Chinese state-building.