Martin J. Wiener . An Empire on Trial: Race, Murder, and Justice under British Rule, 1870–1935 . New York : Cambridge University Press . 2009 . Pp. xiv, 255. Cloth $80.00, paper $25.99.

Abstract

“British Power in India is like a vast bridge … Strike away either of its piers and it will fall, and what are they? One of its piers is military power: the other is justice, by which I mean a firm and constant determination on the part of the English to promote impartially and by all lawful means, what they (the English) regard as the lasting good of the natives of India. Neither force nor justice will suffice by itself.” Perhaps it is no surprise that James Fitzjames Stephen, legal adviser to the government of India (1869–1873), should dignify the world of Indian legal practice in this manner. Less to be expected is the fact that distinguished historians of empire 150 years later should share something of Stephen's outlook. For Martin J. Wiener, author of this fascinating book, “Law lay at the heart of British imperial enterprise,” not in India alone but increasingly throughout the colonial empire. That it did so owes much to the scholarship of legal writers themselves, not only Stephen but others such as Henry Maine and the Mills. They were outstanding members of Britain's nineteenth-century intellectual elite, constantly crossing the frontiers of law, jurisprudence, custom, anthropology, and history. All were fit subjects for detailed biographical study, as illustrated in The Victorian Achievement of Sir Henry Maine: A Centennial Reappraisal (1991).