Treaty law: the extent of consular jurisdiction in North Africa from the middle of the seventeenth to the middle of the nineteenth century

Abstract

This article is based on a close comparative examination of the Treaties between the North African States of the Ottoman Empires, and Morocco on the one hand and the states of Western Europe and North America on the other in the early modern period. It shows that they formed a corpus of regulations and understandings that underpinned a ‘customary’ diplomatic law. It challenges the view that Europeans and North Americans legally enjoyed extraterritorial rights, because consuls had complete jurisdiction over their own subjects in legal cases where only their own subjects were involved. It argues that the boundaries of the consuls' job were very blurred in the treaties which was a result of the terminology used and the double function of consuls: to control their subjects as much as to protect them.