Michael Lobban. Imperial Incarceration: Detention without Trial in the Making of British Colonial Africa.

Abstract

Michael Lobban’s Imperial Incarceration: Detention without Trial in the Making of British Colonial Africa provides a rich and methodical examination of how the detention without trial of defiant or rebellious African leaders became a key mechanism for British imperial expansion and control throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Lobban’s analysis begins by sketching out a central paradox: How could a nation that professed its commitment to the rule of law and the sacred common-law value of habeas corpus commit such apparently large-scale violations of these principles throughout Britain’s African empire? The answer, Lobban argues, lies in the ambiguity of what the “rule of law” itself meant, as well as the racialized nature of empire. As Lobban demonstrates, conceptions of the “rule of law” were defined by both a “substantive” tradition that sought to protect the rights of the individual against arbitrary state power and a “formalistic” tradition that believed any act done under the legal authority of parliament was legitimate (7–8). While the former position is typically associated with the renowned English jurist A. V. Dicey, Lobban argues that the “Diceyan” view of the rule of law could tolerate violations of due process so long as these were given legal “cover” through the legitimacy of legislative and other lawmaking bodies. Detention without trial was also much more palatable within the inherently unequal racial hierarchies of Western imperialism. Simply put, colonial and imperial officials were less concerned about protecting the rights of nonwhite imperial subjects.