Lex Mercatoria, Legal Pluralism, and the Modern State through the Lens of the East India Company, 1600–1757

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 277-290
Author(s):  
Neilesh Bose ◽  
Victor V. Ramraj
Keyword(s):  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Legal Pluralism ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Legal Authority ◽  
Global History ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Lex Mercatoria ◽  
Historical Antecedents ◽  
The Way

Abstract As the debate over historical antecedents to contemporary forms of lex mercatoria suggests, the nature of legal authority appears to be changing into a less familiar, more pluralistic form, even as states struggle to reassert their power. In seeking to understand this transformation in—and decentering of—the modern state's authority, we consider the multiple sources of legal authority claimed by the East India Company (1600–1757) and the way in which it positioned its legal and political legitimacy in relation to multiple and often competing centers of power in India. This article proposes the notion that the hegemony of a centralized modern state belongs only to a narrow sliver of history, hiding a much deeper pluralism within global history. In so doing, this article sets the stage for a sustained consideration of the plural nature of authority in the waxing and waning phases of the modern state.

Federalism as Legal Pluralism

2020 ◽  
pp. 490-527
Author(s):  
Erin Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Good Governance ◽  
Legal Pluralism ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
Legal Authority ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Normative Authority ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Sources Of Authority ◽  
Sovereign Authority

This chapter uses the dynamic federalism model of constitutional dual sovereignty as an analytic window into the emerging legal pluralism discourse. Legal pluralism explores the significance of multiple sources of legal authority and identity with which individuals simultaneously engage. Overlapping sources of normative authority range from different levels institutions of government to private sources of “quasi-legal” norms generated by tribal, religious, commercial, professional, or other associations. Legal pluralism scholars challenge the tradition of legal monism—so entrenched that its presumptions often go unnoticed—which views legitimate legal authority as deriving only from an established source of sovereign or natural authority that unambiguously trumps all competing forces. Proponents contend that legal pluralism more accurately captures the scope of political contest in pluralist societies and the full array of normative forces operating on individual actors. Skeptics critique it for failing to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimately normative forces, and for threatening critical societal institutions by weakening the prerogatives of nation-states. Constitutional federalism, itself characterized by multiple sources of authority within a single geographical territory, provides a simple example of legal pluralism that sidesteps much of the controversy. Involving only sovereign authority, federalism avoids legal pluralism’s normative challenge to statism. Moreover, it resolves at least some of the heterarchical uncertainty unleashed by legal pluralism through the hierarchical ordering device of federal supremacy. Nonetheless, the structural features of dynamic federalism provide valuable platforms for cross-jurisdictional deliberation and dialogic policymaking that resonate with the good-governance proposals advocated by legal pluralists for more inclusive norm generation.

An International Perspective on Health Care: The Case for Terms Abroad for Future Physicians

1997 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 164-169
Author(s):  
Terry S. Weiner
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Care System ◽  
International Perspective ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Care System ◽  
The Way

As David Hornung and Cathy Shrady demonstrate in their paper in this volume on different healing traditions, societies differ on how they define illness and health, how they explain the lack of health, and in how they apply local values to problems of health. The purpose of this paper is to expand this insight to some larger issues, including the role played by the health care system, as organized by the modern state, in the way physicians do their work. 

Delhi in Transition, 1821 and Beyond

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
English Translation ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Original Manuscript ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
The Times ◽  
First Time ◽  
The City

Commissioned by the English East India Company to write about contemporary nineteenth-century Delhi, Mirza Sangin Beg walked around the city to capture its highly fascinating urban and suburban extravaganza. Laced with epigraphy and fascinating anecdotes, the city as ‘lived experience’ has an overwhelming presence in his work, Sair-ul Manazil. Sair-ul Manazil dominates the historiography of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century compositions on Delhi in Persian and Urdu, and remains unparalleled in its architecture and detailed content. It deals with the habitations of people, bazars, professions and professionals, places of worship and revelry, and issues of contestation. Over fifty typologies of structures and several institutions that find resonance in the Persian and Ottoman Empires can also be gleaned from Sair-ul Manazil. Interestingly, Beg made no attempt to ‘monumentalize’ buildings; instead, he explored them as spaces reflective of the sociocultural milieu of the times. Delhi in Transition is the first comprehensive English translation of Beg’s work, which was originally published in Persian. It is the only translation to compare the four known versions of Sair-ul Manazil, including the original manuscript located in Berlin, which is being consulted for the first time. It has an exhaustive introduction and extensive notes, along with the use of varied styles in the book to indicate the multiple sources of the text, contextualize Beg’s work for the reader and engage him with the debate concerning the different variants of this unique and eclectic work.

Civil Society in UN Peacebuilding Discourse

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura J. Shepherd
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Local Knowledge ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
Conceptual Domain ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Over Time ◽  
The Way

Chapter 5 outlines the ways in which civil society is largely associated with “women” and the “local,” as a spatial and conceptual domain, and how this has implications for how we understand political legitimacy and authority. The author argues that close analysis reveals a shift in the way in which the United Nations as a political entity conceives of civil society over time, from early engagement with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to the more contemporary articulation of civil society as consultant or even implementing partner. Contemporary UN peacebuilding discourse, however, constitutes civil society as a legitimating actor for UN peacebuilding practices, as civil society organizations are the bearers/owners of certain forms of (local) knowledge.

Denationalization

2017 ◽  
pp. 357-382 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Gibney
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
State Power ◽  
Academic Work ◽  
Public Order ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Citizenship Status ◽  
The Way

Citizenship in the modern state is in many ways uniquely secure as a status. Yet states have always possessed some bases through which they may remove citizenship, including fraud, disloyalty, acquisition of another citizenship, marriage to a foreigner, and threat to public order. Indeed, denationalization powers have recently gained attention as many liberal states have created new laws to strip citizenship from individuals involved with terrorism. In this chapter, I explore the practice of denationalization. I first consider the definition, grounds, and historical development of denationalization power. I then draw from recent academic work to show how denationalization offers insights into questions of significance relating to the ethical limits of state power, the historical development of citizenship status, and the way restrictive immigration controls impact upon state members. I conclude with a discussion of some outstanding issues raised by the denationalization for scholars of citizenship.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 257-268
Author(s):  
Jagjeet Lally
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Global History ◽  
Multiple Forms ◽  
The Third ◽  
Merchant Networks ◽  
Continental Interior ◽  
The Way

The endurance of terrestrial forms of connectivity over the Eurasian continental interior lies at the heart of this book. By reviewing the life of such connections in the twentieth century, this chapter draws out this book’s four major interventions. The first concerns the value of examining long-term patterns of change and the virtue of thinking across such divides as Mughal and British, pre-colonial and colonial. The second relates to the way this book thinks about empires in novel ways, whether by taking a trans-imperial framework or by focussing on the ways non-political entities—such as merchant networks—persisted through periods of imperial flux and the rise and fall of empires. The third is the focus on space, particularly interior or inner-continental space, and its place within global history. The final contribution is to provide an impetus to scholars to think of the synchronicity of multiple forms of globalisation and their interrelation.

scholarly journals THE DEVELOPMENT ECONOMIST AS HISTORIAN OF ECONOMICS: THE CASE OF WILLIAM J. BARBER

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (03) ◽  
pp. 325-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mauro Boianovsky
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Time Span ◽  
East India Company ◽  
History Of Economic Thought ◽  
British East India Company ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

The paper shows how William Barber’s background as a development economist influenced his research agenda in the history of economic thought, in terms of the questions he asked and the way he approached them. The links between the history of economic theory and of policy-making are highlighted, as well as Barber’s investigation of the engagement of British economists with India’s economic matters throughout the time span of the British East India Company.

scholarly journals A letter from Captain C. M. Elliot, Madras Engineers, to Lieut,-Col. Sabine, For. Sec. R. S., transmitted through the court of directors of the East India company. Communicated by Lieut.-Col. Sabine

1851 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 908-910
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Magnetic Survey ◽  
John Herschel ◽  
The Way

Having undertaken the magnetic survey of the Indian Archipelago at the recommendation of the Royal Society, I think a slight sketch, detailed as briefly as possible, of my operations may not be uninteresting to Sir John Herschel and the Committee of Physics of which he is Chairman, prior to the publication of the Survey. I trust likewise I have acted strictly in accordance with the wishes of those who so kindly recommended me for the Survey, and I hope that my earnest efforts to do my duty will gain for me that approbation which I have under no ordinary difficulties incessantly striven to obtain. I will in the first place mention the different stations I visited, and then describe in a few words, the way in which the observations were taken.

“NOTHING IS THE WAY IT SHOULD BE”: GLOBAL TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE TIME REGIME IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 821-848 ◽  
Author(s):  
SEBASTIAN CONRAD
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
New Technology ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Time Regime ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
The Way

When European clocks first arrived in seventeenth-century Japan they generated a commotion. The highly complex but also very precise instruments had been brought to Nagasaki by the Dutch East India Company that monopolized the sparse and highly regulated trade between Japan and Europe for more than two centuries. As an expression of the technological sophistication achieved in early modern Europe, mechanical clocks were hi-tech products of their time. They operated with a spring to store the energy, and their making required highly developed skills in casting and metalwork. The new technology made it possible to emancipate the measurement of time from sunshine and to achieve an evenness of temporal rhythms, not only during the day, but also at night.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document