Legal History Law

Inquiring into Empire:Colonial Commissions and British Imperial Reform, 1819–1833

Edited by Lisa Ford · Kirsten McKenzie · Naomi Parkinson · David Andrew Roberts
Cambridge University Press February 2025

Specifications

ISBN-13
9781009470629
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Publication
February 2025
Format
Hardback
Jurisdiction
U.K. ? Countri(es) for reference only

Details

This is the first history to grapple with the vast project of British imperial investigation in the years between the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and the Great Reform Act. Beginning in 1819, commissions of inquiry were sent to examine law, governance, and economy from New South Wales and the Caribbean to Malta and West Africa. They left behind a matchless record of colonial life in the form of papers, reports and more than 200 volumes of testimonies and correspondence. Inquiring into Empire taps this under-used archive to develop a new understanding of imperial reform. The authors argue that, far from being a first step in the march towards liberalism, the commissions represented a deeply pragmatic, messy but concerted effort to chart a middle way between reaction and revolution which was constantly buffeted by the politics of colonial encounter.

  • Synthesizes the vast and neglected archive of commissioners' papers, reports and correspondence.
  • Draws out the variety and intimacy of engagement between commissioners and colonial publics in an array of colonies, focusing on the voices of unfree labourers and free people of colour.
  • Develops a new understanding of British reform in the period between the close of the Napoleonic wars and the opening of the 'Age of Reform'.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. The State of things
3. Reordering New South Wales
4. Remaking Caribbean courts
5. Defending the crown
6. Liberated Africans
7. Bonded labour
8. Slave traders
9. Reforming Ceylon
10. Reporting and reforming
A note on sources
Bibliography
Index.
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