This chapter explores the role of Hong Kong in cementing, in British eyes, the distinction between extradition and the exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction. The process of distinguishing these legal mechanisms unfolded through disputes about the Hong Kong government’s treaty right, or lack thereof, to request the surrender of fugitives who had taken refuge in Chinese territory. Taking place during 1843–65, these complex disputes caused British officials to conclude that, unlike other British arrangements with France, the United States, and several other countries, the Sino-British treaty regime for fugitive surrenders was not directly reciprocal. Rather, it gave only China a right of ‘extradition’ and only British Hong Kong a right of ‘exclusive jurisdiction’ over crimes committed within its territory. As such, there was ‘a kind of balanced one-sidedness’ between Britain and China. Retrospectively constructed from evolving ideas of British sovereignty and international reciprocity, this view of the Sino-British treaties influenced British imperial reforms in extradition. It also shaped the legal status of dual British–Chinese subjects in important ways.

This chapter shows how British sovereignty in Hong Kong was built on inchoate ideas of extradition: half-formed ideas of whether and how the colony would surrender Chinese criminals to China under the contested treaties that ended the Opium War. In 1841–44, these ideas were entangled with unstable ideas of jurisdiction, as British officials struggled to fit the conquered Chinese population of Hong Kong within recognised categories of British subjecthood. Events on the ground then short-circuited efforts to resolve this problem. In The Queen v. Lo A-tow (1843), Governor Henry Pottinger conflated his power to refuse Chinese requests for fugitives for lack of evidence (which China did not dispute) with the power of British courts to try Chinese subjects and sentence them to punishment (which China did dispute). Pottinger’s interpretation of Lo A-tow established a tenuous precedent for territorial sovereignty in a turn of events that would have far-reaching consequences.

While statelessness remains a global phenomenon, it is a global issue with an Asian epicentre. This chapter situates the book within the context and multi-disciplinary scholarship on statelessness in Asia by reviewing the causes, conditions and/or challenges of statelessness. It recognizes statelessness in this region as a phenomenon beyond forced migration and highlights the arbitrary and discriminatory use of state power in producing and sustaining statelessness. The chapter reviews the ‘state of statelessness’ in Asia, including applicable international, regional and national legal frameworks. It also maps some of the core themes that emerge from the contributors’ examination of the causes and conditions of statelessness in Asia. These include: the relationship between ethnic, religious, cultural and linguistic diversity and statelessness; the legacies of colonialism; contemporary politics surrounding nation-building, border regimes and mobilities; as well as intersecting vulnerabilities. The chapter concludes with some preliminary thoughts on frameworks of analysis and future research agendas, including challenges and prospects for reform.

This chapter investigates the governance of a diverse city over time, with a special emphasis on those institutions which interfaced between the imperial representatives and the local elites. In the Ottoman reform period, these consisted primarily of an array of different consultative councils at various levels (municipal and provincial). Notably under Saudi rule, these were slowly integrated into the emerging new Kingdom, accompanied by a gradual change in the urban elites controlling the city. The chapter also investigates the implementation of law and order. Finally, it tackles attempts to regulate immigration from Ottoman times to the early Saudi nationality law, and the different rationales behind attempts to limit or rather circumscribe the presence of foreigners. Policies were driven, in Ottoman times, by fears of imperial intervention and attempts at poverty limitation, while, in the Saudi period, an initially liberal approach to nationality soon gave way to more exclusive considerations.