The thematic horizon within which this article takes place is the colonial expansion of the Western powers in China between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. Focusing on the foundation of the British, French and American concessions in Tianjin, it aims to reconstruct the Western strategies of colonial governance and the role played by law in the process of production of a new social space. Opened as a treaty port in 1860, Tianjin is the only Chinese city where up to nine foreign concessions coexisted, becoming a complex, hybrid space (in)between East and West, defined by social practices, symbolic representations, and legal categories, which does not coincide simply with the area defined by the entity as a state, nation, or city.
