Global Legal History

This course is an experiment. Like any experiment, it is motivated by a hypothesis: that it is possible to conceive and teach something called “global legal history.” Like any hypothesis, this may be shown to be false. Given the large scale of the problem and the small scale of a semester, we may not reach a clear result. But we shall do our best. As we discuss the texts before us, I want us constantly asking what we think we are doing: what it means to produce history; what it means to write legal history; what it might mean to write one that is global. At least two kinds of parochialism shape this syllabus: temporal and cultural. Another way to say this is that the syllabus is bounded by my vast ignorance. Most of our readings arose during or address the period from roughly 1500 to 1850. Though we won’t have time to read much about earlier or later eras, we will always want to keep an eye open for the ways in which such a limitation inhibits conceiving a properly global legal history. The course is also overwhelmingly oriented toward European legal regimes and their experiences in diaspora. Another way to put this is to say it is chiefly concerned with the nature of legality in and among empires.