Colonizing the Muslim world and its Shariʿa

Abstract

The British in India Until the eighteenth century in India, and the early nineteenth century in the Ottoman Empire, Islamic law and local customs reigned supreme, both having long been a way of life. But during the 1600s, Britain began its penetration of India through the agency of the East India Company (EIC), whose sole goal was commercial profit. For about a century and a half, the EIC tried gradually to increase its political and military influence, but it was not until 1757 that it asserted its almost total military dominance, henceforth embarking upon the massive project of colonizing India, both economically and juridically. In the eyes of the British, economic and commercial ambitions were intimately connected with the particular vision of a legal system structured and geared in such a manner as to accommodate an “open” economic market. The legal system was, and continued to be, the sphere that determined and set the tone of economic domination. But most importantly for the British, the avid desire to reduce the economic costs of controlling the country led them to maximize the role of law. Law was simply more financially rewarding than brute power. And so it was not until the appointment of Warren Hastings as Governor of Bengal in 1772 that a new stage in the British legal redesign of India got underway. The appointment ushered in the so-called Hastings Plan, to be implemented first in Bengal.