Abstract
By examining policing institutions, mentalities, and practices towards Westerners based on police archives, this dissertation evaluates the impact of pragmatic policing in undermining foreign privileges and Western colonialism in early twentieth-century Beijing. Long before the formal end of British and American legal privileges in 1943, the local law enforcement strategically navigated between the city’s ostensibly rigid Sino-Western geographic and cultural boundary, thereby nipping Sino-foreign tension in the bud. Despite divergent socioeconomic backgrounds and motivations, police officials and frontline patrolmen engaged in constant negotiations and competitions with Western residents, who were gradually persuaded to obey municipal and national laws. These street-level transnational engagements were somewhat shaped by but fundamentally independent of the nosier, more extensively studied mass anti-imperialist movement. Through firm and practical handling of foreign cases, Beijing policemen paved the end of foreign privileges in China.
Committee Chair
Timothy Parsons
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Author's Department
History
Document Type
Dissertation
Date of Award
9-8-2023
Language
English (en)
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7936/1rgw-yz11
Recommended Citation
Wang, Haochen, "“Only Chinese Police Can Take Care of Chinese People”: Policing Westerners in Beijing and the Fall of Western Privileges, 1900s – 1937" (2023). Arts & Sciences Theses and Dissertations. 3146.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.7936/1rgw-yz11