Abstracts are invited for a special issue of Comparative Legal History, on the topic of “Consular Communities and International Law in East Asia: Empire, Modernity, and State Transformation, 1860-1920”
Priority will be given to abstracts received by 15 May.
This special issue seeks to open new lines of enquiry into the development of international law in East Asia, during the critical period between the 1860 Convention of Peking, which extended the extraterritorial treaty-port regime and drew China into the system of the imperial Great Powers; and the 1919 Versailles peace conference which initiated the era of liberal internationalism and the ascendency of nation-states.
Articles are particularly welcomed which examine the lives of the institutional leaders which stood between the East Asian and Western worlds of the late nineteenth century: Western lawyers, consuls, customs officers, and diplomats who administered extraterritoriality day-to-day; East Asian jurists, intellectuals, and reformers who sought to preserve the agency of Asian states, while positing new ideas about sovereignty and international relations; and the multinational communities in which these new ideas percolated. We welcome an expansive view of international law – encapsulating not only the ‘traditional’ concepts of the Law of Nations or the Law of the Sea, but also the workings of consular and mixed court systems, the interpretation of diplomatic communications, and the variable rights and privileges of treaty port residents.
Articles should not exceed 10,000 words including footnotes, and must include a comparative element.
Expressions of interest and abstracts may be sent to Dr Loughlin Sweeney – lsweeney@yonsei.ac.kr
Deadline for draft articles: 1 September 2025