Chapter 5 - ‘A legislating empire’: Victorian political theorists, codes of law, and empire

Summary

INTRODUCTION

A feature of British nineteenth-century political and legal thinking was a sustained and direct engagement with empire. Victorian political thinkers were a pivotal part of a trans-national exchange in the ideas and practice of civil society and government. The British empire in India provides the most striking illustration of this exchange; some theorists, like the Mills, were employed in the East India Company; others like Henry Maine and James Fitzjames Stephen were colonial administrators for the Raj; and yet others like Burke, Bentham, Malthus, and Richard Price incorporated Indian affairs into their reflections on political economy and theory. One imperial issue in particular absorbed their attention – the transformation of law in India, and more particularly the primarily utilitarian ambition to frame codes of law for India. Because this ambition was also central to British dominance of the sub-continent, political theorists from Mill to Maine were drawn closely into the actual exercise of imperial power. In turn, their engagement with imperial governance had an impact on domestic conversations about legal reform, and more precisely about the relationship between law and the development and progress of civil societies.