Exterritoriality
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a term used in international law for those privileges granted to foreigners by states exempting them from being subject to the laws of that state while they are within its boundaries. There are three recognized cases in international law: (1) The persons and property of ambassadors or ministers and their suite. In certain non- CHARGE HOUSE DENITRATING 4 HOUSE 3 NA DA F ST D CB E 7 WASH WATER SETTLING HOUSE WWST FS L 5. W, water tank; G, glycerine tank; NS, nitrator separator; PWT, pre-wash tank; L, labyrinth; DT, drowning tank. 6. WT, washing tank; L, labyrinth; F, filter; S, scales. 7. WWST, wash water settling tank; L, laby- . rinth Christian nations this has been extended to include consuls. (2) The persons and property of visiting sovereigns. (3) Public ships in foreign waters. The privilege of being exempt from the laws of non-Christian states has been obtained by the Western powers for all of their subjects residing in such countries as Turkey, China, etc. These provisions guaranteeing exterritoriality to Christian subjects of foreign nations were incorporated in the case of Turkey and the nations of the Far East into definite treaties. Likewise the privileges and immunities granted by the Italian government to the Pope come under cases of exterritoriality. In the "Alabama" case the arbitrators at Geneva ruled that the immunity granted to vessels of a foreign nation could not be called a right which belonged to them, but only a courtesy and hence did not relieve the neutral state in whose harbor they were from the re-pl sponsibility of preserving that neutrality.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The whole second half of Collier's 1921 account has been swept away. The "privilege of being exempt from the laws of non-Christian states" - the capitulations - was abolished for Turkey by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, for Egypt by the Montreux Convention of 1937, and for China when Britain and the United States gave up their treaty rights and consular courts in 1943; the system is now remembered chiefly as a grievance of the unequal-treaty era, and the framing of it as a right of "Christian subjects" would not be written today. The Pope's immunities were likewise recast in 1929, when the Lateran Treaty made Vatican City a sovereign state rather than an extraterritorial enclave in Italy. What survives is the first part of the entry - immunity for diplomats, visiting heads of state and warships - codified in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961, which most of the world's states have ratified. (The block of letters about nitrators and drowning tanks in the middle of the text is stray matter from a neighbouring illustration in the original volume.)
Written for this edition, 2026.