At the start of 1917, Britain appeared to have secured a range of legal rights for its British community in Xinjiang. British subjects received tax exemption benefits and the right, as a defendant, to have their criminal or civil case heard by a British representative. However, the legitimacy of these rights was taken away after the Russian Revolution later that year, when the Soviets announced their intention to rescind extraterritorial privileges for Russian subjects in China. British consuls-general had always maintained that the Sino-Russian agreements
This book tells the story of British imperial agents and their legal powers on the British-Chinese frontiers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It offers new perspectives on the British presence in Yunnan and Xinjiang in western China and the legal connections to the British colonies of India and Burma. It examines how the mobility of people across borders forced consuls to adapt and shape law to accommodate them. Salt and opium smugglers, Indian and Afghan traders, and itinerant local populations exposed the jurisdictional gaps between consular and colonial authority. Local and transfrontier mobility defined and shaped British jurisdiction across the frontier in complex ways. It argues that frontier consular agents played key roles in creating forms of transfrontier legal authority in order to govern these migratory communities. Consular legal practices coexisted alongside, and often took advantage of, other local customs and legal structures. The incorporation of indigenous elites, customary law and Chinese authority was a distinctive feature of frontier administration, with mediation an important element of establishing British authority in a contested legal environment. The book is essential reading for historians of China, the British Empire, and socio-legal historians interested in the role of law in shaping semicolonial and colonial societies.
, Politics and Humanitarian Action ( Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press ), pp. 1 – 22 . Cumming-Bruce , N. ( 2018 ), ‘ U. N. Panel Confronts China Over Reports That It Holds a Million Uighurs in Camps ’, New York Times , 10 August , www.nytimes.com/2018/08/10/world/asia/china-xinjiang-un-uighurs.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimesworld (accessed 26 March 2019 ). DuBois , M. ( 2018 ), The New Humanitarian Basics ( London : Humanitarian Policy Group ). Freedom House ( 2018 ), ‘ Democracy in
Between 1904 and 1942, the British consular representative and his subordinates in Xinjiang heard thousands of cases involving British defendants. The cases covered a range of issues, from civil suits involving marriage, land ownership and debt payments to criminal cases involving assault, arms and drug trafficking, and murder. Some of the cases were politically and culturally sensitive, raising questions about the nature and scope of British consular jurisdiction. In the previous chapter, I explored the legal frameworks of consular jurisdiction and highlighted
autonomy for ethnic minorities aims to give them economic, administrative and language privileges, but any discussion of self-determination is strictly prohibited. Today, China has five autonomous regions: the Tibetan Autonomous Region, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Mongolian Autonomous Region. In 2003, the Chinese government published a White Paper which states that ‘since the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC–24 AD) [Xinjiang] has been an inseparable part of the multi-ethnic Chinese nation’. 5 It
As Britain consolidated its authority over Upper Burma from 1885, the Indian government turned towards British India’s northern frontier and northwestern China. Xinjiang was a province of the Qing Empire, but as a region bounded by the mountains and vast stretches of desert, it was also a place that topographically defied strong imperial control. 1 Russia had a growing presence in the north of the province and both the Indian government and Foreign Office viewed a British presence in Xinjiang as an essential bulwark against the Czarist Empire. British Indian
In 1914, British consular guards arrested and detained Akhtar Muhammed, an Indian-born British subject residing in the far western Chinese province of Xinjiang. He was one of many Indian men who had travelled from the northern regions of British India, crossed the valleys and mountainous terrain, and entered Chinese territory. The British representative stationed in Kashgar, in the west of the province, suspected that Muhammed had committed burglary. His subsequent arrest and trial followed legal precedent and legislation. Metropolitan Orders in Council and
-called ‘autonomous’ ( zizhi ) minority government, its policies of national unification became a conspicuous failure among key non-Han peoples. Failure during the Maoist period was notable for the conjunction of a divided political elite and the mobilisation of widespread collective violence. But the ‘minority nationalities’ ( shaoshu minzu ) of Tibet and Xinjiang in particular have continued a consistent resistance
identities they share. By the same token, some other ethnicities do not represent major divisions either. In practice, for example, the Hui are very similar to Han Chinese except for their Islamic religion, and the 3835 Understanding Chinese:Layout 1 128 12/7/12 11:05 Page 128 Understanding Chinese politics Table 8 Largest official ethnic groups Ethnic group Population Distribution Zhuang Manchu Guangxi, Yunnan, Guangdong, Guizhou Liaoning, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Hebei, Beijing, Inner Mongolia Ningxia, Gansu, Henan, Xinjiang, Qinghai, Yunnan, Hebei, Shandong, Anhui
. What can explain this variation? Within broader and longer conflicts, short-lived episodes of extreme violence could be limited to relatively small territories. This was the case with Przheval’sk district, an area of tsarist Turkestan bordering Xinjiang, where violence against the Slavic settlers during the 1916 uprising was by far the harshest. How to make sense of the temporally and spatially circumscribed “peaks” of violence? In order to provide convincing answers, our analysis needs to be conducted at different scales. On the one hand, we must be attentive to
