An Empire on Trial
Race, Murder, and Justice under British Rule, 1870–1935

This book explores interracial homicide in the British Empire during its height - examining these incidents in each of seven colonies scattered throughout the world.

Martin J. Wiener (Author)

9780521735070, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 15 December 2008

270 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.37 kg

'In this important, path-breaking, study in comparative colonial history, Professor Wiener engagingly and persuasively demonstrates the complex and conflicting pulls on the criminal justice systems of a range of multi-racial British colonies. Confidently steering between reductionist and complacent renderings of imperialism, he shows the extent to which British politicians, the Colonial Office, colonial officials, the judiciary, and, not least, the colonized, pushed for genuine equality before the law for all residents of these possessions, typically in the face of visceral opposition by European minorities with their own limited and self-interested vision of the rule of law and its protections.' John McLaren, Emeritus Professor of Law, University of Victoria, British Columbia

An Empire on Trial is the first book to explore the issue of interracial homicide in the British Empire during its height – examining these incidents and the prosecution of such cases in each of seven colonies scattered throughout the world. It uncovers and analyzes the tensions of empire that underlay British rule and delves into how the problem of maintaining a liberal empire manifested itself in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The work demonstrates the importance of the processes of criminal justice to the history of the empire and the advantage of a trans-territorial approach to understanding the complexities and nuances of its workings. An Empire on Trial is of interest to those concerned with race, empire, or criminal justice, and to historians of modern Britain or of colonial Australia, India, Kenya, or the Caribbean. Political and post-colonial theorists writing on liberalism and empire, or race and empire, will also find this book invaluable.

1. On the high seas
2. Queensland, 1869–1889
3. Fiji, 1875–1885
4. Trinidad and the Bahamas, 1886–1897
5. India: the setting
6. India: in the legal arena, 1889–1922
7. Kenya, 1905–1934
8. British Honduras 1934.

Subject Areas: Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], British & Irish history [HBJD1], General & world history [HBG]