Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T03:26:39.754Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Plural Society and the Colonial State: English Law and the Making of Crown Colony Government in the Straits Settlements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2015

Jack Jin Gary LEE
Jack Jin Gary LEE*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of California—San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this article, I explain the establishment of Crown Colony government within the racially diverse colonies of the British Empire through an examination of the reconstitution of the Straits Settlements as a Crown Colony in 1867. My central argument is that the reconstitution of the Straits Settlements as a Crown Colony rested on colonial officials and subjects’ shared understandings of the fragmented and unstable character of racially diverse societies. Such understandings were analogous to J.S. Furnivall’s concept of “plural society” and were generated by the negative images of “native” populations and the precarity of colonial rule. Despite the reception of the common law and its institutions in the colony, these beliefs ultimately justified colonial officials’ repudiation of liberal principles of government and law despite intransigent protests by a minority of officials and subjects. In the Crown Colony of the Straits Settlements, this meant the institutionalization of a constitutional framework and laws that granted the Governor authoritarian powers over the legislature, judiciary, and society to maintain the social order.

Keywords

colonial stateCrown Colony governmentStraits Settlementsplural societypolitical liberalism
Type
State and Personhood in Southeast Asia
Information
Asian Journal of Law and Society , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , November 2015 , pp. 229 - 249
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press and KoGuan Law School, Shanghai Jiao Tong University 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Department of Sociology, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0533, USA. The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and both co-editors, Lynette Chua and David Engel, for their constructive comments and suggestions. He would also like to acknowledge Carolyn Wee of the NUS Law Library, Andrew J. Harding, Norman P. Ho, Ivan Lee, Kwai H. Ng, John D. Skrentny, Kevin Y.L. Tan, and Arun Thiruvengadam for their thoughtful feedback or for pointing out key sources that have helped develop this argument. In particular, the author is grateful to John McLaren for pointing out the significance of Sir Peter Benson Maxwell. All faults are, of course, the author’s. Thanks are also due to the Regana Mydin and Haikel Rino Selamat of the Centre for Asian Legal Studies at NUS for their support in the course of writing. Correspondence to Jack Jin Gary Lee, Department of Sociology, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0533, USA. E-mail address: [email protected].

References

Bartholomew, Geoffrey W. (1991) “English Statutes in Singapore Courts.” 3 Singapore Academy of Law Journal 1–117.Google Scholar
Beasley, Edward (2005) Mid-Victorian Imperialists: British Gentlemen and the Empire of the Mind, New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Colonial Office (1867) Rules and Regulations for Her Majesty’s Colonial Service, London: Eeyre and Spottiswoode.Google Scholar
Furnivall, John S. (1956) Colonial Policy and Practice: A Comparative Study of Burma and Netherlands India, New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Halliday, Terence, & Karpik, Lucien (2012) “Political Liberalism in the British Post-Colony: A Theme with Three Variations,” in T. Halliday, L. Karpik & M.M. Feeley, eds., Fates of Political Liberalism in the British Post-Colony, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 3–55.Google Scholar
Harding, Andrew J. (2001) “Comparative Law and Legal Transplantation in South East Asia: Making Sense of the ‘Nomic Din’,” in D. Nelken & J. Feest, eds., Adapting Legal Cultures, Oxford: Hart Publishing, 199–222.Google Scholar
Hirschman, Daniel, & Reed, Isaac (2014) “On the Formation of Social Kinds: Expanding the Causal Repertoire of Sociological Research.” 32 Sociological Theory 259–282.Google Scholar
Holt, Thomas C. (1992) The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor, and Politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832–1938, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Lange, Matthew (2009) Lineages of Despotism and Development: British Colonialism and State Power, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McLaren, John (2010) “The Uses of the Rule of Law in British Colonial Societies in the Nineteenth Century,” in S. Dorsett & I. Hunter, eds., Law and Politics in British Colonial Thought: Transpositions of Empire, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 71–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McLaren, John (2011) Dewigged, Bothered, and Bewildered: British Colonial Judges on Trial, 1800–1900, Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Pham, Julie (2005) “J.S. Furnivall and Fabianism: Reinterpreting the Plural Society in Burma.” 39 Modern Asian Studies 321–348.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rajah, Jothie (2012) Authoritarian Rule of Law: Legislation, Discourse and Legitimacy in Singapore, New York: University of Cambridge Press.Google Scholar
Roberts-Wray, Kenneth (1966) Commonwealth and Colonial Law, London: Stevens and Sons Ltd.Google Scholar
Robinson, Ronald, &Gallagher, JohnDenny, Alice (1981) Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism, 2nd ed., London: The Macmillan Press.Google Scholar
Selznick, Philip (1992) The Moral Commonwealth: Social Theory and the Promise of Community, Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Steinmetz, George (2004) “Odious Comparisons: Incommensurability, the Case Study, and ‘Small N’s’ in Sociology.” 22 Sociological Theory 371–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steinmetz, George (2007) The Devil’s Handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Steinmetz, George (2008) “The Colonial State as a Social Field: Ethnographic Capital and Native Policy in the German Overseas Empire before 1914.” 73 American Sociological Review 589–612.Google Scholar
Turnbull, C.M. (1972) The Straits Settlements, 1826–67: Indian Presidency to Crown Colony, Singapore: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wight, Martin (1946) The Development of the Legislative Council: 1606–1945, London: Faber and Faber.Google Scholar
Wight, Martin (1952) British Colonial Constitutions 1947, Oxford: Oxford at the Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, Nicholas H. (2011a) “Corruption as State-Building? The Escalation of Administrative Politics in Early Colonial British India,” online <http://nickwilsonsoc.org/papers/corruption.pdf> (last accessed 12 June 2015).+(last+accessed+12+June+2015).>Google Scholar
Wilson, Nicholas H. (2011b) “From Reflection to Refraction: State Administration in British India, circa 1770–1855.” 116 American Journal of Sociology 1437–1477.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yen, Chin-Hwang (1986) A Social History of the Chinese in Singapore and Malaya, 1800–1911, Singapore: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar