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SUMMARY:'This Melancholy Labyrinth': Magistrates and Order in the Early Ni
 neteenth-Century British Empire  - Lauren Benton (New York University)
DTSTART:20130218T170000Z
DTEND:20130218T184500Z
UID:TALK42771@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Dr Joel Isaac
DESCRIPTION:Some historians have characterized the proliferation of rights
  talk in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century Atlantic world a
 s marking a profound shift in political thought and culture.  Atlantic rev
 olutions supposedly broadcast the idea of universally held individual righ
 ts\, while abolitionism worked to convert compassion for slaves into inter
 national law doctrine by portraying slave traders as violators of universa
 lly held rights.  Writing against this view\, other scholars have portraye
 d anti-slavery movements as primarily aimed at extending the state’s pur
 view over private jurisdictions and have emphasized continuities from anci
 en régime to post-revolutionary imperial law.  This paper seeks to reconc
 ile elements of both perspectives by analyzing rights talk in the context 
 of concerns about intra-imperial and inter-imperial order in the early nin
 eteenth century.  The paper examines legal arguments of abolitionists\, in
  particular those of James Stephen\, and suggests that references to order
  (a stand-in for the common good) worked to group several strands of right
 s talk and to promote a particular vision of imperial constitutionalism.  
 The paper also considers prominent cases and legal projects in the empire 
 in the first decades of the nineteenth century to show the convergence of 
 responses in calling for reform of the colonial magistracy.
LOCATION:OCR\, Trinity College
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