IAS Book Launch: Imperial Britain's Unruly Subjects

ABOUT THE BOOKS

In The Overseer State: Slavery, Indenture and Governance in the British Empire, 1812–1916, Sascha Auerbach offers a bold new historical interpretation of late-stage slavery, its long-term legacies, and its entanglement with the development of the modern state. In the wake of abolition, from the Caribbean to southern Africa to Southeast Asia, a fusion of government authority and private industry replaced the iron chains of slavery with equally powerful fetters of law and regulation. This 'overseer-state' helped move, often through deceptive and coercive methods, millions of Indian and Chinese indentured laborers across Britain's imperial possessions. With a perspective that ranges from Parliament to the plantation, the book brings to light the fascinating and terrifying history of the world's first truly global labor system, those who struggled under its heavy yoke, and the bitter legacies left in its wake.
More information: The Overseer State

For a taste of The Overseer State, read the First Page on the IAS online review Think Pieces: The First Page: The Overseer State - Think Pieces

Armed with Sword and Scales: Law, Culture, and Local Courtrooms in London, 1860-1913 takes a look at the mid-eighteenth century author and magistrate Henry Fielding who adjudicated cases of theft, assault, and public disorder from his London home on Bow Street. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Fielding's modest 'police office' had expanded to become the most prolific court system in Britain and the cornerstone of criminal and civil justice in the metropolis. Sascha Auerbach examines the fascinating history of this institution through the lens of 'courtroom culture' – the combination of formal statute and informal custom that guided everyday practice in the London Police Courts. He offers a new model for understanding the relationship between law, culture, and society in modern Britain and illuminates how the local courtroom became a crucial part of everyday life and thoroughly entangled with popular representations of justice and morality.
More information: Armed with Sword and Scales

The evening will also be an opportunity to discuss the past, present, and future of the history of law and race, which are two topics explored in the new Cambridge University Press book series, Histories of Slavery and its Global Legacies, edited by Sascha Auerbach and Juanita de Barros. The series covers the histories of enslavement, coerced labor, labor migration, and the legacies of these practices across the globe. Focusing on English-language scholarship, it welcomes proposals on these topics in the European, African, Caribbean, North and South  American, and Asian contexts. While broad in conceptual scope, HSGL aims to provide a coherent vision, in line with the “legacies” theme, by focusing on late-stage slavery (i.e. late-eighteenth and nineteenth century) and the legacies of the institution from Emancipation in the British Empire through the end of the First World War. It especially welcomes works that place different regions (e.g. the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean World) and different approaches (e.g. legal history vs. postcolonial history) in conversation with one another. The series is published with support from the University of Nottingham’s  Institute for the Study of Slavery (ISOS).
More information: https://www.cambridge.org/core/series/histories-of-slavery-and-its-global-legacies/9430A29F360928ED06823C728D4FD8AB

ABOUT THE EVENT

Sascha Auerbach will be in conversation with Catherine Hall (Emerita Professor of Modern British Social and Cultural History, UCL), Alan Lester (Professor of Historical Geography, University of Sussex), Michael Lobban (Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford Universaity and Professor of Legal History) and Kim Wagner (Professor of Global and Imperial History, Queen Mary University).

This book launch is a cooperation with the Institute for the Study of Slavery (ISOS) at the University of Nottingham.