Crime and Empire, 1840–1940: Criminal Justice in Local and Global Context (review)

This collection of essays, which grew out of a conference in New Zealand on “Comparative Histories of Crime,” addresses itself to the issue of how crime was conceived and managed in the heyday of British imperialism. Perhaps reflecting the volume’s origins, its contents are heavy on examples from Australia and New Zealand, lighter on India and Africa. This imbalance, however, might also be seen as a strength, as the antipodes have traditionally gotten short shrift in imperial historiography. Whatever their geographic focus, the contributors’ thematic range is impressive. Chapters cover such topics as policing, imprisonment, criminal law and the courts, and contemporary and historical representations of the criminal justice system.

Whenever possible, contributors place colonial legal and penal practice within international perspective. After all, simultaneous with the imposition of British law and penal practice in the colonies was the centralization of state control in Britain itself and throughout Europe, with its attendant creation of national prison, police, and court systems to replace the old medieval patchworks of local, pluralistic approaches to crime. One notable example from this collection of a comparative approach is Godfrey and Dunstall’s chapter on policing in two “frontier towns”—Timaru in New Zealand and Crewe, a mining boom town near the Welsh border. Both of these towns experienced considerable violence, much of it fueled by alcohol and a preponderance of young and single men. This connection between masculinity and crime dovetails nicely with recent work on the topic by Martin Wiener and Clive Emsley. It also exemplifies a commitment to gender in this volume, found also in essays on sati, the creation of a women’s prison in New Zealand, and the experience of Boer women in South African concentration camps.

Colonial law was often an instrument for the subjugation of colonized peoples, though it might also provide a means of resistance, or be useful in settling disputes among colonial subjects themselves. Given the vast geographic, racial, and ethnic diversity of the empire, police and penal practice could vary considerably across regions and over time. The career of a single administrator could encompass stark contrasts. Such was the case of Edward Eyre, as Mark Finnane points out in his essay, “Crimes of violence, crimes of empire?” During his early years in Australia in the 1840s, Eyre was noted for his protective attitude toward aboriginal peoples, while a generation later he was “the agent of racialising and brutal domination in the West Indies.” (51)

Among the more heavy handed examples of imperial law, Mark Brown points out in his essay “Colonial history and theories of the present,” was the practice in India of classifying entire populations as “criminal.” In the 1850s, “Track Laws” meant that if the British authorities could track an offender to a particular village, but could not locate him within it, then the entire village could be held responsible for the alleged crime. An 1871 Act brought unruly ethnic groups in north India under subjugation by declaring them “criminal tribes”—a category which gave the government broad powers of regulation and control, including the right to impose curfews, hold daily roll calls, and resettle entire villages. Criminal law thus became an instrument of political subjugation, excluding whole populations from membership in civil society.

Colonial administrators could also be pragmatic in their encounters with “native” legal practice. As Jane Buckingham demonstrates, British judges in India invoked Brahmanic law and cited legal precedents from princely courts in their interventions over sati. Wherever possible, the law’s authority should appear benignly hegemonic rather than overtly coercive. Richard S. Hill provides another such example in his essay on “Maori police personnel” in New Zealand. Not only would using Maori police constables save the British money, but would help “make Maoris parties to their own submission.” (181) Much like the New Police in British working-class neighborhoods at the time, Maori police were seen as “missionaries” part of whose function was to instill British, middle-class values in...