Sovereignty, state-building, and the abolition of extraterritoriality

As opposed to territoriality, where a state claims exclusive jurisdiction over all people within its territorial boundaries regardless of their nationalities, extraterritoriality refers to a legal regime where a state claims exclusive jurisdiction over its citizens residing within the boundaries of another state. Although Western states claimed extraterritoriality over their citizens in non-Western countries throughout the nineteenth century, they abolished extraterritoriality in the twentieth century. What explains the abolition of extraterritoriality in world politics? Furthermore, what factors account for the variation in the timing of when such extraterritorial powers abolished extraterritoriality?; I find that traditional explanations for the abolition of extraterritoriality that rely on culture (the English School's standard of civilization argument) and power (Krasner's organized hypocrisy argument) do not account for Western states' decisions to keep or abolish extraterritoriality.; I argue that the institutionalization of state law in non-Western countries best explains the abolition of extraterritoriality. In the modern international system, states are responsible for clarifying and enforcing legal and property rights within their territories. When an exchange occurs across state borders, each state expects the other to provide information about legal rights within its state and to enforce these legal rights. Western states demanded that non-Western countries clarify and protect legal and property rights as a precondition for the abolition of extraterritoriality.; I test the competing explanations in comparative case studies of Japan, Turkey, and China. I have three examples of failures to abolish extraterritoriality (1882 Tokyo Conference, 1856 Paris Conference, and 1921--1922 Washington Conference) and three examples of successful efforts (1894 Aoki-Kimberley Treaty, 1924 Lausanne Treaty, and 1943 China and the United States and China and Britain treaties).; I find that as non-Western countries codified and clarified legal rights and consolidated the state's legal hierarchy, Western countries abolished extraterritoriality. In examining the abolition of extraterritoriality, I clarify integration of non-Western states into the Westphalian state system and provide clues about the development and future evolution of the Westphalian state system. My research contributes to our understanding of the modern state-building process in non-Western states and provides insight into the dynamic relationships between domestic institutions and international practices.