This book advances a new perspective in world history, arguing that institutions and culture-and not just the global economy-serve as important elements of international order. Focusing on colonial legal politics and the interrelation of local cultural contests and institutional change, it uses case studies to trace a shift in plural legal orders-from the multicentric law of early empires to the state-centered law of the colonial and postcolonial world. Benton shows how Indigenous subjects across time were active in making, changing, and interpreting the law-and, by extension, in shaping the international order. | Law and Colonial Cultures by Lauren Benton, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters