Rage for Order: The British Empire and the Origins of International Law, 1800 1850
Lauren Benton and Lisa Ford's jointly written book is slim in size 197 pages of text, 74 of notes but expansive in scope and interpretative ambition. It is a dense, complex piece of history, frequently operating on several levels at once. It asks us to rethink the study of international legal history in fundamental ways, not least by redrawing the boundaries between imperial, international, and global legal regimes. The authors pursue these arguments through an exploration of a series of overlapping projects of legal reform which took place within the British empire, and on its peripheries, in the first half of the 19th century. The book's methodological claims are compelling; its contentions about the British imperial constitution are powerful, but not wholly persuasive. Approached, however, as a book about a set of themes rather than as an authoritative treatment of specific problems Rage for Order represents an immensely significant intervention in a wide range of debates.