Unsound Empire: Civilization and Madness in Late-Victorian Law

A study of the internal tensions of British imperial rule told through murder and insanity trials

Unsound Empire analyzes the history of criminal responsibility in the nineteenth-century British Empire through detailed accounts of homicide cases. Catherine Evans explores changing understandings of insanity and their consequences for the principle that only intentional, sane, blameworthy acts deserved punishment. While British common law was flexible, it had a breaking point, and controversies involving responsibility and insanity challenged judges to determine how many of the emerging ideas about criminality, race, ethnology, and the mind the law could accommodate.