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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Bill Maurer
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Abstract

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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.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , 1995 , pp. 255 - 286
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 by The Law and Society Association

Footnotes

This research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (SES-9208273) and the MacArthur Foundation through the Center for International Security and Arms Control, Stanford University. I thank Ruth Buchannan, George Collier, Eve Darian-Smith, Mindie Lazarus-Black, Saba Mahmood, Diane Nelson, Joel Streicker, and Liliana Suarez-Navaz, all of whom read and commented on earlier versions. Special thanks are due to Jane Collier and David Engel, who patiently reviewed the drafts and the project it grew from and offered generous support and encouragement throughout. Thanks are due, too, to the Law & Society Review's anonymous reviewers. All errors and inconsistencies that remain are solely the author's responsibility.

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