An Empire on Trial

Race, Murder, and Justice under British Rule, 1870-1935

Bibliographic Data

ID9359458
AuthorsChristopher Prior (0000-0002-1014-0598, University of Leeds, corresponding author)
Year2010
Volume125
Issue516
Pages1268-1269
Publication date2010-07-19
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe English Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-8266 • E-ISSN: 1477-4534
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/ehr/ceq226
OpenAlexW2053410530
LanguageEN
Citations received11

Charting the fall-out of murders that took place across the British Empire, Wiener's study makes a convincing case that it was at points of inter-racial homicide that the tensions between liberalism and authoritarianism—between a commitment to the legal equality of all and the reliance of the imperial system upon inequality for the functioning of that system—were most visible. Examining a wide variety of territories, from the large and prestigious (India, naturally) to the small and ignored (British Honduras), Wiener has assembled a satisfyingly rich cast of egos, revelling in the periodic clashes between ever-despairing Whitehall mandarins, paternalistic (and sometimes patricianly) colonial governors, and European settlers racked by economic insecurity. Wiener pitches An Empire on Trial as being primarily of value for its demonstration of the diversity of empire but, in contrasting himself to those straw men who essentialise the imperial experience, he overstates how innovative his work is in this regard. Instead, the book's real value lies in two other aspects. Firstly, an incisive blend of different causal strands—of both economic and geographical imperatives and of interactions between individual historical actors—provides a clear sense of the contingent nature of the look and workings of imperial justice. In showing how it took an alignment of various factors for the scales of justice to tilt one way or the other, Wiener demonstrates how any outcome was continually open to renegotiation should economic circumstances alter or a new governor come ashore. Of particular note in this regard are the tussles between the European settlers of Fiji and their nemesis, the high-minded and forceful idealist colonial governor, Arthur Gordon, who railed against those Europeans who saw ‘a native life ... as a matter of infinitely small value’ (p. 88). After Gordon's departure, the settlers increasingly gained the upper hand, leading to the unpicking of some of the legal safeguards that had been put in place relating to indentured labour. The second key virtue of the work lies in its keen sense of imperial networks, the transfer of peoples and ideas within the empire. The recent clarion calls of scholars such as David Lambert and Alan Lester as to the importance of such networks requires exploration, which makes Wiener's work stand out all the more. Touring governors, such as Gordon, are the perfect example of those personnel whose continual redeployment of policies or ideals, irrespective of wherever they happened to be at any one time, meant that they were always likely to clash with local settlers who were motivated by self-interest of a different kind

Colonialism · Economic Justice · Empire · Political science · Sociology · Value (mathematics · Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · History · Law

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