Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/112

 a great impetus when the Near East fell under the domination of the Mahommedans. The Christian nations, who then entered into relations with the Turkish authority, were careful in their treaties to provide for the establishment of consulates; and the administration of the law of the nation represented was admitted to form an essential part of the consular functions.

It was on this Turkish precedent, then, that practice in the Far East was based. In the first commercial treaty ever entered into between China and a Western Power—the British Treaty of Nanking of 1842—the word exterritoriality, however, does not occur and no provision was made for the exercise of jurisdiction by consular officers. In a supplementary treaty for the regulation of trade signed the following year exterritoriality, however, begins to take shape. It was agreed, for instance, that British merchants and others residing at, or resorting to, the Five Ports opened to trade "shall not go into the surrounding country beyond certain short distances to be named by the local authorities in concert with the British consul and on no pretence for purpose of traffic"; whilst as for seamen and persons belonging to the ships they shall only be allowed