Writing Law, Making a “Nation”: History, Modernity, and Paradoxes of Self-Rule in the British Virgin Islands

Abstract

Law has become a key signifier in British Virgin Islander nationalist discourse. British Virgin Islanders cast law as central to their identity as a people and celebrate the self-authoring of law. At the same time law writing has fostered continued colonial rule and subordination to the global market. The International Business Companies Ordinance, hailed as the BVI's first truly self-authored law, produced a marketable identity for the territory in the world of international finance, yet led to increased surveillance by metropolitan powers and contributed to the deferral of political sovereignty. This article considers the role of law in modern narratives of national uniqueness. It explores the paradox that modern law, with its accompanying rhetoric of progress, its formations of history, and its construction of “national” selves, is central to the cultural politics of difference, yet is also central to the processes of capitalist integration that both deny and demand difference.