Law and the Economy in Colonial India claims the space where three vast domains overlap – law, economics and history. The question at the core of the book could be synthesized as follows: did colonial legal interventions affect the economy on the Indian subcontinent and how? While the first part of the question seems rhetorical, the latter is a very ambitious research project. The task is made even more onerous by the chronological span of the book. Although it focuses mainly on the period between 1800 and 1930, it looks back to the 1770s and well into the post-colonial period, covering practically a span of over two centuries of history. Unconventionally for a historical monograph, two established authors are facing this challenge together. While they provide the reader with an erudite entry point in what might become a fascinating subfield of research, the length of the book (177 pages without the endnotes) simply does not allow for a concrete line of thought. Thus, while the book’s strength lies in portraying a nuanced and plural history of transformation, its more general arguments read as educated guesses, sometimes venturing into the realm of speculation.

The book draws much from institutional economics and the historiography it has inspired. The questions arising within this approach deal with property rights and their enforcement, the subsequent power of entrepreneurial incentive, and the legal influence on the institutional framework of doing business. The book is much less concerned with questions of political economy and draws no inspiration from the recent rise of the New History of Capitalism.1 In terms of style, the authors describe their book as a „narrative history“ and should be complimented for a co-authorship that does not display much variation in style. The authors provide a good overview of the most significant contributions to the various themes and, further, themselves deliver an original research in way of archival engagement with court cases. Apart from a standard introduction and conclusion, the book has eight chapters.

Chapters two and three deal with the initial spurt of colonial legislation between 1772 and 1857 and the concurrent preoccupation of the company raj with land rights (read state revenue) respectively. Substantive as well as universal procedural law was established for the first time in the region. Famously, religious codes were chosen as a basis for the new system with far reaching effects. It suffices here to note that Hindu (or more properly Brahminic) religious code books were rich in injunctions on caste, family and purity but had little to offer in terms of court procedures and norms regarding impersonal business transactions. This problem was compounded by the attempt to codify plural customs – maulvis were employed in interpreting Muslim tradition and law for the new system. English common law was used initially in port cities where European communities were affected and, more generally, where European interests were concerned. It comes as no surprise that far from creating clarity the system was wrought from the very beginning by overlaps and confusion. Legal interventions in the realm of land on the other hand, while having an important imprint on the functioning of the state by means of tax collection, had also a lasting mark on the economy by means of framing the land and – even more crucially – the credit market in rural areas. The latter half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th were marked by an attempt of the colonial authorities to protect tenants and borrowers. As implied by the authors, this could be seen as an attempt to stabilize rural social order in view of the raj’s own survival, side effect thereby being the hampering of the processes of – the authors admittedly do not use the word – proletarianization.

Chapter five turns to the question of succession of property and the underlying question of coparcenary (or joint) rights versus individual rights. The highlight of the chapter is the question of gender and property rights. Here, although women could legally own property (and did so in practice in affluent, urban or Muslim contexts), laws prescribing joint property as well as laws of inheritance allowing for women to enjoy property but not to alienate it, precluded this possibility in practice. Chapter six turns to labor law, which expectedly varied substantially with regard to time, place and type of business. Based primarily on a selection of the meanwhile rich literature on indentured labor and plantations, the chapter focuses on the rather harsh Workman’s Breach of Contract Act and penal contracting. While such legislation was highly consequential and subject of heated debates (by the end of colonialism it was completely repudiated), factory legislation in contrast had a modest impact.

Chapters seven and eight, bearing subtitles „late westernization“ and „flawed westernization“, deal with the Indian Contract Law of 1862 and corporate law respectively. If immediate market interactions entailed little to no risk, buying and selling on long-term contract necessitated secular (read impersonal) laws for the enforcement of such contracts. The so-called „Blue Mutiny“ prompted the creation of such legal instrument in India. The iterations of the Companies Acts as well as the institution of the managing-agency, peculiar to the subcontinent, are also discussed. Chapter nine, finally, turns to the „burden of procedures“ and provides the reader with a statistical overview of the work of courts and the (dis)proportion of some particular cases. The book ends on the bizarre note that „plaintiffs file frivolous suits“ (p. 176), implying that the current legal system is overburdened not for systemic reasons but due to the nature of litigants.

The most burning issue of economic history looking at the modern period has been the question of the so-called great divergence.2Law and the Economy in Colonial India does not address the question, but it lays the groundwork for a study of law and its relations to the diverging manifestations of capitalism in metropole and colony.

Notes:
1 Jürgen Kocka / Marcel van der Linden (Hrsg.), Capitalism. The Reemergence of a Historical Concept, London 2016.
2 Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence. China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy, Princeton 2000; Prasannan Parthasarathi, Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not. Global Economic Divergence, 1600–1800, Cambridge 2011; Kenneth Pomeranz / Prasannan Parthasarathi, The Great Divergence Debate, in: Tirthankar Roy / Giorgio Riello (Hrsg.), Global Economic History, London 2019.