Colonial and Imperial (British) Legal History
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Recent papers in Colonial and Imperial (British) Legal History
This article tells the story of India’s first income tax, and the men and events that shaped it—explaining why the tax was introduced, its scope and operation, and why it failed. It is a story told against a backdrop of civil war and... more
period to the modern edition. I have every intention of making this chapter prescribed reading for my students. This then brings me to the second aim; namely, whether the translation will be " useful. " Utility is a slippery concept, but... more
The transition from personal to impersonal cooperation was essential for the economic rise of Europe. To date, the few studies of the transition to impersonal cooperation which went beyond basic barter or cash exchange, analyzed bilateral... more
How the introduced common law in the Australian territories of Papua and New Guinea dealt with accusations of sorcery and with violent crime arising from the belief that people were sorcerers, focusing in particular on the decisions of... more
This study examines the history of Indian-settler legal relations in Indiana, from the state’s pre-territorial period to the late-nineteenth century. Through a variety of interdisciplinary sources and methods, the author constructs a... more
This Article is based on a larger work that seeks to map the uses of different legal vocabularies by ambitious European legal and political thinkers in the period of c. 1300-1800 in order to defend, explain and organize the exercise of... more
The colonial appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) was a major circuit of legal traffic in the British Empire, the JCPC anchored the imperial legal order and has therefore emerged as the central archive in new... more
—This article recalls the fact that until the mid-19th century neither company legislation, nor jurists, nor economists, envisioned companies to be private or small. Nevertheless, once freedom of incorporation and general limited... more
The essays in this volume provide a new perspective on the history of convicts and penal colonies. They demonstrate that the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were a critical period in the reconfiguration of empires, imperial... more
There is now a large literature arguing that shareholders are better protected against abuse by corporate insiders in common-law than in civil-law countries, especially those with legal systems modeled on the French code. There is also a... more
Traditionally Māori attributed disease to supernatural causes, including mākutu (sorcery) and, as with some other indigenous cultures, considered that killing sorcerers was both just and right. Belief in mākutu ran counter to the Church's... more
Global histories have fixated on connections, notably in their treatment of colonial and postcolonial port cities. While such cities have been intensely connected places, however, they have also been intensely bounded ones. The present... more
Through a critical examination of British colonial policies in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) in Bangladesh, this paper challenges the conventional wisdom that colonial administration had a benevolent strategy of 'protecting' indigenous... more
Every former British colony in South Asia has retained colonial laws that criminalize sexual activity between persons of the same sex. There are intensifying calls for the repeal of such laws, especially as western states have moved... more
The inability to define religion and consequently protect religious freedom has been a question that has preoccupied Indian courts. This book investigates the identification and regulation of religion through an intellectual history of... more
مقالة تتضمن استعراضاً لكتاب (الشيخ الإمام والوزير الصالح أحمد بن مهزع المالكي الأزهري: 1270-1344هـ / 1853-1926م) لمؤلفه: فضيلة الشيخ عبدالرؤوف بن مبارك بن جمعة المالكي مذهباً الأزهري مشرباً البحريني المحرّقي مولداً ونشأةً. This article... more
Historians such as Richard Grove and Gregory Barton have emphasized the central place of “empire forestry” in the emergent environmentalism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Two themes in their work are engaged in this book... more
The formation of Hindu law has been chronicled by historians and others as a complex process involving the negation of customary law and the upholding of sacred texts, upon which codes of law were formulated. This paper seeks to... more
Missionaries were among the first Europeans to interact with the New Zealand Māori, bringing an evangelical message with a strict set of "laws" for Māori to follow. Māori, whose own religious beliefs required rigid observance to ritual,... more
Historians have tended to assume that the boundaries of Calcutta were generally agreed upon before 1794, and that their formalization in that year marked a natural stage in the evolution of the town. The documents published here tell a... more
Local bylaws were the primary tool for local governments in British-ruled Palestine to exercise their authority, and water was the paradigmatic subject for local legislation. Looking at the diffusion of legal norms in local bylaws in the... more
Deaf History has burgeoned in academia in recent decades, but interpreters who are loathe to insert themselves into the dialogue have no forum to discuss our rich heritage. While the contemporary role of sign language interpreter matured... more
Current approaches within legal history do not allow for for conceptual clarity in cross cultural and global contexts. Legal functionalism has been identified as one of the problems that impede the production of knowledge from a... more
By surveying contemporary sources this article reveals direct evidence for the involvement of the South Sea Company in the passage of the Bubble Act. The dominant position of the Company and of its national debt conversion scheme in the... more
This article surveys the water law of Palestine under British rule, identifying the legal norms governing the use of water and explaining some of the factors shaping the development of this area of the law. It argues that despite their... more
This article, written for an issue of Clio@Themis on "Nature as a Norm", examines the water law of jurisdictions from across the "common law world" in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period in which increasingly intensive... more