An Empire of Laws

A compelling reexamination of how Britain used law to shape its empire

For many years, Britain tried to impose its own laws on the peoples it conquered, and English common law usually followed the Union Jack. However, the common law became less common after Britain emerged from the Seven Years' War (1754–63) as the world’s most powerful empire. At that point, imperial policymakers adopted a policy of legal pluralism: some colonies remained under English law, but others, including parts of India and former French territories in North America, retained their previous legal regimes.

As legal historian Christian R. Burset argues, determining whether a colony received English law depended on what kind of colony Britain intended to create. Policymakers believed English law could turn any territory into an anglicised, commercial colony; in contrast, legal pluralism 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 the American colonies’ reverence for common law: it was an expression of their equal status in the empire. An Empire of Laws, 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.