An Empire of Laws Audiobook Libro.fm

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 worlds 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 colonys economic and political subordination Britains turn to legal pluralism thus reflected the victory of a new vision of empireauthoritarian extractive and tolerantover 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 empirewide overview of law as an instrument of policy in the eighteenthcentury British Empire offers an imaginative rethinking of the relationship between tolerance and empire