A Changing Legal World: Christianity and Extraterritoriality in a Sichuan Courtroom (1810–1911)

This article examines the juridical interactions between Christian congregations and local communities in late Qing Sichuan by tracing how extraterritoriality operated in everyday judicial practice. Moving beyond accounts centered on anti-Christian violence, it analyzes how Chinese converts, non-Christian litigants, Western missionaries, and Qing officials navigated the uncertainties that imperial encroachment brought to local adjudication. Drawing on county-level judicial cases, imperial documents, local gazetteers, and missionary accounts, the study shows how Chinese Christians learned to mobilize missionary-backed extraterritorial leverage to circumvent routine barriers to legal access, while non-Christians and local elites developed strategic countermeasures to cope with foreign interference. Rather than treating extraterritoriality solely as a colonial imposition, the article argues that it became embedded as an additional, treaty-produced dimension of judicial operation in local society. By foregrounding the agency of multiple social actors, this study offers a nuanced account of how extraterritoriality reshaped late Qing local justice.