Reviews

‘This book is a colourful comparative study of the contested boundaries between law and politics in the British Empire …The sheer number of characters and colonies McLaren has researched here gives unprecedented empirical breadth to his history. Underneath McLaren’s detailed biographies lies a new history of the British Empire written on an archival scale.’ - Lisa Ford (Victorian Studies, Spring 2014) ‘McLaren’s book provides a rigorous and fascinating account of how the Colonial Office exercised its disciplinary authority over colonial judges… McLaren’s empire-wide comparative approach allows us to observe imperial political, legal, and social networks in play.’ - Philip Girard (Journal of Law and Society vol 39:04:2012) ‘McLaren is to be congratulated for coherently tying together the experience of a dozen colonies over a full century… the author has done a good job showing how the quirks and oddities of these individual judicial characters have the potential to reveal a great deal about the inner workings of the imperial project.’ - Patrick J. Connors (Canadian Historical Review, vol 94:01:2013) ‘McLaren’s work is a wonderful contribution to English legal history that will be of great value to both legal scholars and more general students of the British Empire.’ - Jeffrey B. Robb (The Historian; vol 75:02:2013)