An Empire of Laws

Legal Pluralism in British Colonial Policy

By: Christian R. Burset

Narrated by: Perry Daniels

Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's summary

For many years, Britain tried to impose its own laws on the peoples it conquered, and English common law usually followed the Union Jack. But the common law became less common after Britain emerged from the Seven Years' War as the world's most powerful empire. At that point, imperial policymakers adopted a strategy of legal pluralism: some colonies remained under English law, while others retained much of their previous legal regimes.

As legal historian Christian R. Burset argues, determining how much English law a colony received depended on what kind of colony Britain wanted to create. Policymakers thought English law could turn any territory into an anglicized, commercial colony; legal pluralism, in contrast, would ensure a colony's economic and political subordination. Britain's turn to legal pluralism thus reflected the victory of a new vision of empire—authoritarian, extractive, and tolerant—over more assimilationist and egalitarian alternatives. Among other implications, this helps explain American colonists' reverence for the common law: it expressed and preserved their equal status in the empire. This book, the first empire-wide overview of law as an instrument of policy in the eighteenth-century British Empire, offers an imaginative rethinking of the relationship between tolerance and empire.

©2023 Christian R. Burset (P)2023 Tantor

Changing Imperial Legal Policy

Burset illuminates a dispute within British imperial circles over the legal systems to be applied to the various colonies Britain acquired at the end of the Seven Years’ War. At the same time, the British government was getting more involved in the oversight of Bengal, and that province was caught up in a similar dispute.

Burset identifies the supporters of England’s original colonial legal framework as populists. Populists saw colonies as extensions of Britain and wanted them to mirror the home country as much as possible. Populists tended to be relatively egalitarian, at least as between Britain and its colonies. They believed colonies should be an integral part of Britain’s economic development, and they saw English law as a prime way to encourage and protect economic development.

Burset identifies the advocates of a newer viewpoint as paternalists. The paternalists also believed that English law was a prime way to encourage and protect economic development, but they had a different vision of colonial economies. They believed that colonies should always be dependent on Britain and that their economies should be extractive, sending produce and profits back to Britain. They wanted colonies to remain subjugated to Britain and feared that economic development, particularly manufacturing, could lead to self-sufficiency and ultimately independence. Therefore, as a way to forestall economic development, they advocated retaining the local legal systems existing prior to Britain’s taking control of a colony, leading to legal pluralism. While the paternalists were more authoritarian than were the populists, they also tended to be more tolerant of religious pluralism.

Burset doesn’t point out that there were limits to populists’ egalitarianism. British policy had always insisted on colonial dependence on the mother country; witness the Navigation Acts. The change was that paternalists wanted to use colonial legal systems to reinforce this dependence.

The arguments between the populists and the paternalists came to a head between the end of the Seven Years’ War and the beginning of the American Revolution. With the evident lack of deference and obedience of the thirteen colonies, paternalists wanted to ensure subjugation elsewhere. Burset explains how the paternalists won the arguments, particularly in Quebec, Illinois and Bengal. With the appointment of Lord North as Prime Minister in 1774, the paternalists had the upper hand. Therefore, when the Continental Congress asserted the natural rights of Englishmen in its appeals to the King and Parliament, it was evoking what it believed to be a common heritage, but one that the powers in London no longer accepted.

The different legal systems in the newer North American colonies, and that lack of connection to a shared heritage, may also be one of the reasons such colonies did not join in the fight for independence.

Worthwhile

I studied history in undergrad with a love of British Empire History and graduated from law school. So this book should have been up my ally. Personally I found it to be a bit dry, it kinda felt like the author was just dumping his PHD thesis into a book. A assume the one review on Amazon and here was probably written by him and posted by his mom. That said the book isn’t bad and is full of information. I was hoping for a full legal history of the British Empire, instead this is a history of the Georgian era Qubec Act and early British legal policy in EIC Bengal . The book shows how the British decided to mostly abandon the common law in their extractive colonies and bring legal pluralism instead with French, Hindu, and Islamic law then being found in the British Empire. I give the book 5 stars because it is informative and I want to see more audiobooks on legal history and the British Empire. Just be warned this book is a bit dry and hyper specific in topic. The end is good though as the author talks about how common law was brought to British Settler colonies and Legal pluralism to extractive colonies which helps explains their differing patterns of growth which is quite relevant to understanding the modern world. Buy the book if you really like British Empire History or Legal History.