UMass Law Professor Faisal Chaudhry was invited to speak about his recently published monograph, South Asia, the British Empire, and the Rise of Classical Legal Thought: Towards a Historical Ontology of the Law. The first of the two talks took place at the Centre for Intellectual History at the University of Oxford and the second for the History faculty at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. The University of Oxford talk was a hybrid event, which drew an audience of live participants and participants affiliated with the University as well as others who had zoomed in from various parts of the world. The University of London event was a live discussion which served as the capper for the department’s current term.
In his book, South Asia, the British Empire, and the Rise of Classical Legal Thought: Towards a Historical Ontology of Law, Professor Faisal Chaudhry provides a re-reading of the history of legal change under colonial rule in South Asia from 1757 to the early twentieth century. Broaching major questions in the history of political and economic modernity, the study of law and empire, and legal theory, the book tells a story of the emergence of a new ideal of private law in the South Asian subcontinent in the period after the great anti-colonial rebellion of 1857 and amidst the rise and globalization of classical legal thought. This discussion of late nineteenth-century developments is prefaced by preceding chapters that re-open the question of the relationship between the colonial rule by law in the subcontinent and the conceptualization of sovereignty and the right to property that emerged during the previous century under the East India Company’s rule. Woven through its discussion of the past is the ‘historical ontological’ approach the book’s first several chapters develop to philosophical jurisprudence’s great question, namely: what is the law?
https://www.umassd.edu/news/2024/law/chaudhry-book-talks.html
