Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400-1900

This book advances a new perspective in world history, arguing that institutions and culture–and not just the global economy–serve as important elements of international order. Focusing on colonial legal politics and the interrelation of local cultural contests and institutional change, it uses case studies to trace a shift in plural legal orders–from the multicentric law of early empires to the state-centered law of the colonial and postcolonial world. Benton shows how Indigenous subjects across time were active in making, changing, and interpreting the law–and, by extension, in shaping the international order.