Exporting Time Immemorial: Writing Land Law Reform in India and Ireland

Abstract

Traces a new attention to native custom manifested in writing on both Indian and Irish land law in the 1860s and 1870s, a time when land reformers treated both countries as inhabiting a stage of legal development that regulated distribution of land better than modern British law. Argues that, while the idea of colonized zones constituting earlier stages of civilization was not a new one, this legal trend exported to the colonies the legitimizing power that the English saw in their own constitution and common law. By calling attention to the power of custom in India and Ireland, England styled itself as the civilization whose superior progress could be measured against the colonies it ruled. Claims England’s own identity as a nation shaped by history complicated this position of superiority, making the differences between England and its subordinate zones less apparent.