Following a series of military defeats against Britain and France, Qing China were slowly forced to permit extraterritorial privileges for foreign nationals and even cessions of Chinese sovereignty over certain ports and mineral rights.

Tianjin's position at the intersection of the Grand Canal and the Hai River connecting Beijing to the Bohai Bay made it one of the premier ports of northern China.

[1] After decades, the Japanese, French, and British concessions (which were situated on the right bank of the Peiho River)[1] became the most prosperous ones.

With the 1911 Revolution, the new Republic of China managed a restructuring of Chinese domestic and foreign relations, allowing it to recognize European states as equals.

However, World War II disrupted this nascent development: the Japanese seized the concessions of powers allied against it during its occupation of the country.

The Austro-Hungarian concession zone was 150 acres (0.61 km2) in area, situated next to the Pei-Ho river and outlined by the Imperial channel and the Tianjin-Beijing railway track.

The administration was done by a town council composed of local high-class noblemen and headed by the Austro-Hungarian consul and the military commander, the two of them had a majority vote.

[6] Much more important were contracts involving railways, electric power systems and tramways built and partly operated by Belgian private companies.

[citation needed] The British concession, which contained the trade and financial centres, was situated on the right bank of the river Haihe below the native city, occupying some 200 acres (0.81 km2).

It was held on a lease in perpetuity granted by the Chinese government to the British Crown, which sublet plots to private owners in the same way as was done at Hankou.

[1] The seat of government was the stately Gordon Hall, situated on the financial street called Victoria Road (now Jiefang Lu).

The British concession was blockaded by the Japanese during the Tientsin incident in June 1939, causing a major diplomatic crisis.

Local unrest intensified, mainly due to poor harvests and resulting famine, and Tianjin business interests requested armed protection.

It have total area of 2 km2 After Germany acquired the Kiautschou Bay region in 1898 with a 99-year lease, a further concession was negotiated for the Tianjin enclave and economic growth escalated with infrastructure improvements.

The Boxer Rebellion of 1900 initially laid siege to the foreign concessions in Tianjin, but the city was secured and used as a staging area for the eventual march on Peking by the eight-nation international relief forces.

The United States 15th Infantry was billeted in the former German barracks from 1917 until 1938, departing only after the Imperial Japanese Army entered Tianjin.

Later in 1943, the Italian Social Republic (RSI) ceded the concession to Wang Jingwei's Japanese-sponsored Chinese puppet state, the Reorganized National Government of China.

The Italians were never to regain control over the concession and the Republic of Italy's surrender of all its rights over it by the peace treaty of 1947, was therefore a mere formality.

The Japanese concession was initially established in 1898 in the aftermath of the First Sino-Japanese War and additional areas were added in 1900–1902 after the Boxer Rebellion.

In 1937, the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) occupied the entire city of Tianjin excluding the foreign concessions.

In 1924, the last emperor of the Qing dynasty, Puyi, was forced to leave the Forbidden City in Beijing and lived in Tianjin until 1931 when he was forcibly taken by the Japanese army to Dalian.