Excavating Extraterritoriality: The "Judicial Sub-Prefect" as a Prototype for the Mixed Court in Shanghai

It is fairly well established in Western historiography on China that the early treaty port system in general and extraterritoriality in particular were not simply forced on China by the Western powers, but rather were a product of joint efforts to establish a new modus vivendi. In an essay on the "unequal treaties" and the traditional Chinese tributary system, John K. Fairbank pointed out that "the treaty system in its early decades from 1840s to the 1880s was not merely a device for bringing China into the Western world; it may equally well be viewed as a Qing device for accommodating the West and giving it a place within the Chinese world." 1