Inquiring into colonial law reform: views from the archives of the Commissions of Inquiry, 1819–1833

Commissions of inquiry were sent to diagnose law, governance, and economy in almost every British colony between 1819 and 1833. They produced an enormous archive of public and private commentary on the nature of colonial law, the imperial constitution, and the social and political life of the colonies. This was a counter-revolutionary, conservative project, yet its findings underpinned some stunningly ambitious efforts to reconstitute the empire, as my colleagues Kirsten McKenzie, Naomi Parkinson, David Roberts and I outline in a forthcoming book.

In this paper, I will use our project to explore the dynamics of continuity and change in the processes of nineteenth-century conservative reform. I will do so by focusing on the archive itself. Drawing from examples across the empire, I will outline how the ways commissioners gathered, stored and communicated information shaped the outcomes of their inquiries. I will show how key bureaucrats used (and ignored) this information to turn reform ideas into pan-imperial templates that themselves contain important articulations of the nature and limits of the imperial constitution. And I will explain how this sprawling and diverse archive profoundly shaped our own research questions.

Speaker

Lisa Ford is Professor of History at UNSW (Sydney). She is the prize-winning author of three monographs: Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous People in America and Australia, 1788-1836 (Harvard UP, 2010); Rage for Order: The British Empire and the Origins of International Law, 1800-1850 (Harvard UP, 2016), co-authored with Professor Lauren Benton; and The King's Peace: Law and Order in the British Empire (Harvard UP, 2021). Professor Ford has also co-edited two books: with Tim Rowse, Between Indigenous and Settler Governance (Routledge 2013); and with Peter Cane and Mark McMillan, The Cambridge Legal History of Australia (Cambridge UP, 2022).

All welcome- this seminar is free to attend, but booking is required.