Law across imperial borders offers new perspectives on the complex legal connections between Britain's presence in Western China in the western frontier regions of Yunnan and Xinjiang, and the British colonies of Burma and India. Bringing together a transnational methodology with a social-legal focus, it demonstrates how inter-Asian mobility across frontiers shaped British authority in contested frontier regions of China. It examines the role of a range of actors who helped create, constitute and contest legal practice on the frontier-including consuls, indigenous elites and cultural mediators. The book will be of interest to historians of China, the British Empire in Asia and legal history.

Reviews

'Law across imperial borders significantly enriches our understanding of the British consular presence in frontier China, and it consequently will interest different audiences. Scholars of the British Empire will find a study of colonial law expanding beyond its borders. For historians of Chinese borderlands, Whewell clarifies and greatly nuances the vicissitudes of British interests and their institutional and political contexts.'
Eric Schluessel, American Journal of Legal History

List of figures
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Note on transliteration
List of British representatives in Kashgar
List of Tengyue consuls

Introduction

Part I: The Burma-China frontier
1 Treaty-making and treaty-breaking: transfrontier salt and opium, 1904-11
2 On the move: people crossing the frontier, 1911-25
3 Consuls and Frontier Meetings, 1909-35

Part II: Through the mountains and across the desert: Xinjiang
4 Isolation and connection: law between semicolonial China and the Raj
5 Administering justice and mediating local custom
6 The British end game in Xinjiang: the decline of consular rights, 1917-39

Conclusion

Key terms
Select bibliography
Index