Peripheral Transplants: On the Global Trajectories of Colonial Constitutions

• In Event: 505 - Section on Global and Transnational Sociology Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Section on Global and Transnational Sociology Roundtables (one-hour). Table 01. Global Diffusion of Law

Abstract

In this essay, I re-examine the origins of the legacies of British colonialism through the changing meanings and making of colonial constitutions in Jamaica and the Straits Settlements [Malacca, Penang and Singapore] in the middle of the nineteenth century. Specifically, I focus on the following: i) the formal re-constitution of these two colonies as “Crown Colonies” around the mid-1860s; ii) the relation between these events and the global shift in British imperial policy towards colonial government in the mid-nineteenth century; and iii) the multi-sited political struggles that attended these constitutional changes. When viewed comparatively, the cases of Jamaica and the Straits Settlements reveal the global workings of a bureaucratic mechanism of control that made it possible for the Colonial Office to administer far-flung colonies through the constitutions and laws of colonial states that wielded absolute power over racially diverse societies. Given such, I argue that the global reformulation of Crown Colony government in the British Empire may be attributed to British policy-makers’ assumptions about the political implications of racial pluralism in colonial society; and, by establishing English institutions of government and law as universal norms against which the colonies could be measured, officials formulated and justified their despotic approach to colonial government in racially diverse colonies. Critically, the formation of Crown Colony government was based on policy-makers’ transplantation of the forms of colonial rule within the periphery of empire. As I demonstrate, the constitutional definitions and laws of such colonies were derived and developed from one plural society to another.

Author

• Jack Jin Gary Lee, University of California-San Diego