The Illiberal Commonwealth: On the Problem of Difference and Imperial Control in Jamaica, the Straits Settlements and the Nineteenth Century British Empire

This dissertation investigates two questions: One, how does a conquering state govern a foreign territory and its inhabitants from afar? Two, why was nineteenth century British colonialism marked by the authoritarian, illiberal rule of racially diverse colonies? To answer these questions, I examine the institutionalization of Crown Colony government, which was the standardized mode of colonial rule and long-distance imperial control in the nineteenth century British Empire. Defined by the Crown’s authority over colonial legislation and official appointments, the institutional framework of Crown Colony government was also a monocratic form of colonial rule that granted the Governor, as the Crown’s representative, powers over the colonial legislature and judiciary. To examine the processes of institutionalization, this study focuses on the paradigmatic cases of Jamaica and the Straits Settlements (Singapore, Penang and Malacca) because their re-constitution as Crown Colonies in the 1860s marked the shift in imperial policy away from the use of the old representative system, which had been defined by the establishment of representative Assemblies. By examining the translation of colonial laws across the empire, I argue that Crown Colony government differed from English institutions of law and government because of officials’ concerns over the use of English “liberties” in racially divided societies. Because both officials and elites came to understand such “plural societies” as lacking in social or cultural cohesion and also being unfit to assimilate English liberties, they then contended that such colonies required the expansive powers of the colonial state to maintain the semblance of lawfulness and order. As I demonstrate, British officials thus formulated a racial sociology of empire that was realized in their gradual imposition of a scheme of constitutional progression upon a diverse range of colonies – this was a formalized scheme of colonial rule that rendered the seemingly “backward” and “less civilized” members of plural and traditional societies as less capable of “liberty” and “self-government” and more in need of the Crown’s protection. In light of its findings, this dissertation proposes that sociologists need to analyze the changing structures of sovereignty in order to grasp the transformations of law in colonial and post-colonial states