WHAT IS EX-TERRITORIALITY?

Dunstan Times, Issue 3381, 4 July 1927, Page 2

WHAT IS EX-TERRITORIALITY?

Ex-territoriality is a subject which has become acute since the war. It figured in the trouble with Turkey which flared up at Chanak, and now in China it is one of the major issues between China and the Powers. While in some quarters it is being regarded as being an excessive demand —perhaps “a bit of cheek” —on the part of China that tlie ex-territorial rights it conceded to the Treaty Powers should be given back, it should be held steadily in mind that Germany and Austria lost these rights after the war and their nationals have since carried on in China unmolested thus contradicting the view held by the more Chauvinist that European life is unsafe in China without exterritorial rights.

New Zealand will recall that when there was some exalting of the office of the Dominion High Commissioners certain privileges were given, not, it is true, such as are extended to Ambassadors of foreign Powers in the countries to which they are accredited, but certain small steps in that direction were taken. This first use of the word is confined to exterritorial persons such as ambassadors, ministers and kings when in a foreign country. It is obvious that a diplomatic mission within a foreign country must have certain privileges if it is to carry oht its function satisfactorily. These privileges consist of the right to exemption from criminal, civil, police, fiscal and ecclesiastical jurisdiction. There is also the privilege of inviolability, that is, of the ambassador’s person, of the embassy or legation buildings, and of diplomatic correspondence and couriers; this is not an exterritorial privilege, but rather an additional legal protection, allowed by the common consent of nations to the persons and property of ambassadors, etc.

A va§t literature has arisen on the subject of the precise limits to these exemptions, and questions as to what diplomatic missions may or may not do —questions which often arise and not infrequently cause grave anxiety, for diplomatic intercourse is a very sensitive nerve in international relations.

But public attention just now is more concentrated on the second meaning of the word its application to communities. The history of its use in this sense goes back to the twelfth century when several Italian cities obtained from the Greek Emperors of Constantinople charters for the protection of their commerce and a certain degree of judicial autonomy under specially elected judges, called Consuls (lienee the origin of the Consular Services). The system remained unchanged right down to the fifteenth century when the conquest of Constantinople by the Mohammedans introduced a new factor in the constitution of ex-terri-torial communities. It was this which gave rise to what were termed “Capitulations, 5 ’ from which only since the Great War has Turkey escaped. The origin of the Capitulations is to be found in the exemption of foreigners from Moslem jurisdiction based on the inferiority of non-Moslems and their incapacity to benefit from the privileges of Mohammedan law, which has an essentially religious character. These capitulations of the Near East were modelled on those in the Treaty of Sultan Suleiman I. with Francis I. of France in 1535, and they Became Abe model for the exterritorial system which was afterwards established by Treaty in Morocco, Persia, Muscat, Siam, China, Korea, Japan and Abyssinia. It should be noted that this term “Capitulation” has nothing to do with surrender in a fight. It is derived from the Latin caput, capitulum that is to say, a part of a convention. It is of course against this idea of inferiority which runs through all these Capitulations from 1453 onward that China is protesting and there is n'o doubt that the feeling is becoming more general that the powers have no justification for insisting on its being upheld. Already Japan, Korea, Siam, and Turkey (but not Egypt or-Arabia) have freed themselves from foreign, exterritoriality. Students of this most important international subject will find an excellon recent treatise on the subject in “L’Exterritorialite” by Baron Alphonse De Heyking, published in Paris by Rousseau et Cie.