Law and Colonial Cultures

Legal Regimes in World History, 1400-1900

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by Lauren Benton

Cambridge University Press

Due/Published November 2001, 336 pages, paper

ISBN 052100926X

This book advances a new perspective in world history, arguing that institutions and culture--and not just the global economy--serve as important elements of international order. Focusing on colonial legal politics and the interrelation of local cultural contests and institutional change, it uses case studies to trace a shift in plural legal orders--from the multicentric law of early empires to the state-centered law of the colonial and postcolonial world. Benton shows how Indigenous subjects across time were active in making, changing, and interpreting the law--and, by extension, in shaping the international order.

Contents

1. Legal regimes and colonial cultures
2. Law in diaspora: the legal regime of the Atlantic world
3. Order out of trouble: jurisdictional tensions in Catholic and Islamic Empires
4. A place for the state; Legal pluralism as a colonial project in Bengal and West Africa
5. Subjects and witnesses: cultural and legal hierarchies in the Cape Colony and New South Wales
6. Constructing sovereignty: extraterritoriality in the Oriental Republic of Uruguay
7. Culture and the rule(s) of law.