In Full Flower 317ments with some twenty other countries were concluded over the next sixty
years. Extraterritoriality arrangements were not a Eu ro pe an monopoly.
Peru, Brazil, and Mexico also possessed them, as did Japan following its vic-
tory over China in the Sino- Japanese War in 1894– 95.
Extraterritoriality was applied elsewhere in the Far East. In 1855, Britain
became the fi rst country to acquire extraterritorial rights for its nationals in
Siam. Various other Western states rushed to follow the British lead. Th e
pro cess began in Japan in 1857, in a treaty concluded with the United
States. Here too, other countries soon followed.
Only in rare cases were extraterritoriality privileges refl ected in geo graph-
i cally demarcated enclaves. Th e most famous of these was the International
Settlement of Shanghai in China. Th is dated from 1854, when a municipal
council was formed for the administration of areas of settlement of British,
American, and French residents. (Th e offi cial label “International Settle-
ment” was adopted in 1863.) Nationals of many other states came to reside
there as well. Th e settlement territory always remained formally under Chi-
nese sovereignty, although in practice it became a self- governing area (with
British infl uence always dominant). Th ere was never a unifi ed law for the
area. Persons of each nationality continued to benefi t from the extraterritori-
ality arrangement concluded between their respective home countries and
China. It is pleasing to report that the story of signs being posted saying “No
dogs or Chinese allowed” is a piece of urban mythology (although it is true
that Huangpu Public Garden in Shanghai was off - limits to nonsettlement
residents and also, inter alia, to dogs, in 1890– 1928).
Attitudes toward extraterritoriality privileges varied in the countries that
were subject to them. In China, they were relatively uncontroversial (at least
during the imperial period, which ended in 1911). Th is was because of a long
Chinese tradition of regarding law as fundamentally personal rather than
territorial. In Japan, however, extraterritoriality rapidly became a source of
serious public resentment. But the Japa nese government succeeded in bring-
ing the practice to an early end— the only country to do so prior to 1914.
Beginning in 1894, with Britain in the lead, the various Western states con-
cluded bilateral agreements with Japan discontinuing the regime of special
privileges. Th is development could be regarded as constituting, in eff ect,
Japan’s full admission into the ranks of the civilized states. Other extrater-
ritorial regimes continued well into the twentieth century.