Pär Cassel

Associate Professor of History
Director of Graduate Studies, LSA International Institute

cassel@umich.edu

Office Information:

339 Weiser Hall
phone: 734-936-3979
hours: Tuesdays, 3-5 pm

Asia; Law & Society; Nations & Nationalism; Politics & Power

Education/Degree:

PhD, Harvard University, 2006

About

Recent Articles:

"Treaty Ports and the Foreign Community in Modern China." In the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History (2018).

"Extraterritoriality in China: What we know and what we don't know." In Robert Bickers and Isabella Jackson (eds), Treaty Ports in Modern China, 23-42. (Routledge, 2016)

"'Spelling Like a State': Some Thoughts on the Manchu Origins of the Wade-Giles System." Central Asiatic Journal 58, no. 1-2 (2015): 37-47.

"Traktaten som aldrig var och fördraget som nästan inte blev: De svensk-norsk-kinesiska förbindelserna, 1847-1909." Historisk tidskrift 130, no. 3 (2010): 437-66.

"The Legacies of Ming Taizu in Japan." In Long Live the Emperor: The Uses of the Ming Founder across Six Centuries of East Asian History, edited by Sarah Schneewind, 329-44. (Minneapolis: Society for Ming Studies, 2008)

"Excavating Extraterritoriality: The 'Judicial Sub-Prefect' as a Prototype for the Mixed Court in Shanghai." Late Imperial China 24, no. 2 (2003): 156-82.

Affiliation(s)

Field(s) of Study

Late imperial and modern China;
The treaty ports of East Asia;
Manjuristics and Inner Asian history;
The legal, political and institutional history of China;
The foreign relations of China and Japan;
Comparative totalitarianism;

Current Courses

ASIAN 354-001
War, Rebellion and Revolution in China Through Two Centuries

HISTORY 354-001
War, Rebellion and Revolution in China Through Two Centuries

WRITING 100-004
The Practice of Writing

WRITING 305-002
MWrite Writing Fellows

About

Recent Articles:

"Treaty Ports and the Foreign Community in Modern China." In the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History (2018).

"Extraterritoriality in China: What we know and what we don't know." In Robert Bickers and Isabella Jackson (eds), Treaty Ports in Modern China, 23-42. (Routledge, 2016)

"'Spelling Like a State': Some Thoughts on the Manchu Origins of the Wade-Giles System." Central Asiatic Journal 58, no. 1-2 (2015): 37-47.

"Traktaten som aldrig var och fördraget som nästan inte blev: De svensk-norsk-kinesiska förbindelserna, 1847-1909." Historisk tidskrift 130, no. 3 (2010): 437-66.

Affiliation(s)

Field(s) of Study

Late imperial and modern China;
The treaty ports of East Asia;
Manjuristics and Inner Asian history;
The legal, political and institutional history of China;
The foreign relations of China and Japan;
Comparative totalitarianism;

Highlighted Work and Publications

More Info

Grounds of Judgment: Extraterritoriality and Imperial Power in Nineteenth-Century China and Japan

Pär Kristoffer Cassel

Perhaps more than anywhere else in the world, the nineteenth century encounter between East Asia and the Western world has been narrated as a legal encounter. Commercial treaties--negotiated by diplomats and focused on trade--framed the relationships among Tokugawa-Meiji Japan, Qing China, Choson Korea, and Western countries including Britain, France, and the United States. These treaties created a new legal order, very different than the colonial relationships that the West forged with other parts of the globe, which developed in dialogue with local precedents, local understandings of power, and local institutions. They established the rules by which foreign sojourners worked in East Asia, granting them near complete immunity from local laws and jurisdiction. The laws of extraterritoriality looked similar on paper but had very different trajectories in different East Asian countries. Publisher: Oxford University Press Year of Publication: 2011 Location: New York # of Pages: 272 Price: $39.95