South Asia, the British Empire, and the Rise of Classical Legal Thought

Description

This book delves into the legal history of colonial governance in South Asia, spanning the period from 1757 to the early 20th century. It traces a notable shift in the way sovereignty, land control, and legal rectification were conceptualized, particularly after 1858. During the early phase of the rule of the East India Company, the focus was on 'the laws' that influenced the administration of justice rather than 'the law' as a comprehensive normative system. The Company's perspective emphasized absolute property rights, particularly concerning land rent, rather than physical control over land. This viewpoint was expressed through the obligation of revenue payment, with property existing somewhat outside the realm of law. This early colonial South Asian legal framework differed significantly from the Anglo-common law tradition, which had already developed a unified and physical concept of property rights as a distinct legal form by the late 18th century. It was only after the transfer of authority from the Company to the British Crown, along with other shifts in the imperial political economy, that the conditions were ripe for 'the law' to emerge as an autonomous and fundamental institutional concept. One of the contributing factors to this transformation was the emergence of classical legal thought. Under Crown rule, two distinct forms of discourse contributed to reshaping the legal ontology around the globalized notion of 'the law' as an independent concept. The book, adopting a historical approach to jurisprudence, categorizes these forms as doctrinal discourse, which could articulate propositions of the law with practical and administrative qualities, and ordinary language discourse, which conveyed ideas about the law, including in the public domain.

About the author: 

Faisal Chaudhry is an Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts School of Law. He also holds a concurrent appointment in the Department of History as well. His academic background includes positions at the University of Dayton and the University of Pennsylvania. Chaudhry's historical research centres on the interplay between law, empire, and political economy in South Asia, with a focus on the historical convergence of legal and economic concepts. In his contemporary scholarship, he examines the role of law in supporting markets and the complex impact of property rights institutions on our overall well-being.

Table of contents

Introduction
Section One: The Legal History of Colonial Rule in the South Asian Subcontinent and the Ontologization of ‘The Law’: The Problem and a Proposed Analytical Framework
1:The History of British Colonial Rule in South Asia as a History of Legal Development
2:Beyond Law and History: Naturalization and its Limits in Jurisprudential Inquiry
3:Denaturalizing the Law: Historical Ontology as a Method / A Method for Historical Ontology
Section Two: Laws and the Land: Property and Revenue in the Discourse of the Company's India from 1757 to 1857
4:From Plassey to the Permanent Settlement in the Company’s Bengal: Property, Constitution, and a Historical Ontology of the Laws
5:Beyond the Permanent Settlement: Property Discourse and Non-Zamindari Revenue Systems
Section Three: The Law and its Basic Elements: Rights as Realms and the Will of Juridical Persons in the Discourse of Classical Legal Thought in the Crown's India from 1857 to c.1920
6:Crown Rule and the Legalization of Property: Rights as Realms of Proprietary Interest
7:The Private and the Public Will in the Indian Contract Act
8:From Contract to the Nascent Anthropological Discourse about Status
9:The Restitution of Conjugal Rights and the Nature of Marriage: Constituting the Subsystems of the (Religious) Personal Law as a Law of Status
Conclusion
Bibliography