Legal pluralism and empires, 1500-1850 / edited by Lauren Benton and Richard J. Ross.

New York : New York University Press, c2013.

1st edition

83622

Colonies -- Law and legislation -- Congresses.

Legal polycentricity -- Congresses.

1. Empires and legal pluralism : jurisdiction, sovereignty, and political imagination in the early modern world

2. Bundles of hyphens : corporations as legal communities in the early modern British empire

3. Litigating empire : the role of French courts in establishing colonial sovereignties

4. Aspects of legal pluralism in the Ottoman Empire

5. Reconstructing early modern notions of legal pluralism

6. Between justice and economics : Indians and reformism in eighteenth-century Spanish imperial thought

7. Magistrates in empire : convicts, slaves, and the remaking of the plural legal order in the British Empire

8. Seeking the water of baptism : fugitive slaves and imperial jurisdiction in the early modern Caribbean

9. A pretty government : the confederation of united tribes and Britain's quest for imperial order in the New Zealand islands during the 1830s

10. Laws' histories : pluralisms, pluralities, diversity

11. Rules of law, politics of empire.

'Legal pluralism' is the term used to describe the existence of more than one legal system in the same geographical location. As a study, it concerns the tensions that arise in the operation of these systems alongside each other. It is an analytical tool used by academics to conduct a comparative study of empires. This book seeks to illuminate how people in colonized countries negotiated 'native' and 'introduced' laws. It is a book that will appeal to legal academics and historians.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

9780814708361

ix, 314 p. ; 23 cm