Burlingame Treaty

The Burlingame Treaty, also called the Burlingame-Seward Treaty of 1868 and formally titled the Sino-American Treaty of Peace, Amity, and Commerce, was an agreement between the United States and Qing China that amended the earlier Treaty of Tientsin. It was signed in Washington, D.C. in 1868 and ratified in Peking in 1869. Its purpose was to set friendly relations between the two countries on a formal footing, and the United States granted China most favored nation status in trade. Its most consequential effect was to lift the earlier restrictions on emigration from China to the United States, which opened the way for large-scale Chinese immigration to begin in earnest. The treaty is therefore read both as a commercial and diplomatic instrument and as a milestone in the legal history of migration between the two countries.