Rage for Order: The British Empire and the Origins of International Law, 1800–1850

by Lauren A. Benton, Lisa Ford

International law burst on the scene as a new field in the late nineteenth century. Where did it come from? Rage for Order finds the origins of international law in empires--especially in the British Empire's sprawling efforts to refashion the imperial constitution and use it to order the world in the early part of that century.



Lauren Benton and Lisa Ford uncover the lost history of Britain's global empire of law in colonial conflicts and bureaucratic dispatches rather than legal treatises and case law. Tracing constitutional politics around the world, Rage for Order shows that attempts to refashion the British imperial constitution touched on all the controversial issues of the day, from slavery to revolution. Scandals in turbulent colonies targeted petty despots and augmented the power of the Crown to intervene in the administration of justice. Campaigns to police piracy and slave trading linked British interests to the stability of politically fragmented regions. Dull bureaucrats dominated legal reform, but they did not act in isolation. Indigenous peoples, slaves, convicts, merchants, and sailors all scrambled to play a part in reordering the empire and the world beyond it. Yet, through it all, legal reform focused on promoting order, not advancing human rights or charting liberalism.

Rage for Order maps a formative phase in world history when imperial, not international, law anchored visions of global order. This sweeping story changes the way we think about the legacy of the British Empire and the meaning of international law today.

Genres: Law, History, Nonfiction

288 pages, Hardcover

Published October 3, 2016

About the author

Lauren Benton is an American historian known for her works on the history of empires, colonial and imperial law, and the history of international law. She is the Barton M. Biggs Professor of History and Professor of Law at Yale University.

Reviews

[Resh · Rating 4 out of 5]

lowkey super interesting! the idea of extending control over people through claiming protection is crazy. but very dense read.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dense, erudite, and a bit disjointed, but brilliant throughout. Benton and Ford introduce a new way to do history and a new way to look at law and the idea of international "justice."

[Katherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, if hard to follow, book on the British Empire's role in the development of the international legal order.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A scholarly read, but mercifully short, Prof. Benton does a brilliant job of describing the origins of International Law in less than two-hundred pages.

[Prabhakar Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thoroughly original approach–one that takes a noted subaltern turn – is bound to make Rage for Order an instant classic in international legal scholarship. Rage for Order corrects an important oversight, even myopia, in international legal scholarship. Much of the new pro- duction of scholarship in the discipline oscillates between hagiography and the critical assess- ment of publicists. The rest seem to be writing a parallel history of international law in their region or jurisdiction. Upending such worn-out accounts, though limited to British imperialism, Rage for Order very persuasively finds convicts, abolitionists, slaves, colonial administrators and British courts as equally significant actors in the production of international law. Rage for Order is as novel as it is original in methodology and findings.