Viewed through the lens of interracial homicide trials, several aspects of the British Empire have, I hope, been brought into sharper focus. One is its diversity – most obviously the fundamental difference between colonies of white settlement, moving to self-government and local control of relations with their indigenous and other nonwhite inhabitants, and predominantly nonwhite colonies, governed directly by imperial officials. In this sharp distinction, the uncertain position of East Africa stands out, part of the second group but with a growing body of white settlers eager to join the first. Yet this distinction was not the only element of diversity in the Empire; every colony, it should have become clear, presented its own unique set of circumstances.

Within this diverse array of territories and peoples, one common element was the permanent tension between the forces pressing toward centralization and those pressing towards localization. These trials were all conditioned by the tug between Judges, Governors, and other officials on the spot (backed up in varying degrees by the Colonial Office) attempting for the most part to enforce Empire-wide laws and principles, and local white populations pushing to expand their own autonomy.

At two in the morning on November 7, 1889, four soldiers of the East Kent regiment stationed at Dum Dum, then a few miles outside Calcutta, restricted by regulations in their ability to buy liquor from nearby stores, set out in search of “toddy” (an alcoholic drink made from the sap of the palm tree).

LIBERALISM VERSUS EMPIRE?

The British Empire was built upon a contradiction: justified as a benevolent liberating mission to many millions of Asians, Africans, and other non-Europeans enslaved by ignorance, oppressive traditions, and misrule, it depended at the same time upon the subordination of these millions to the authority of the small ruling British elite. This contradiction was highlighted by the workings of the legal systems the British established in their possessions. The single most important exemplar of the claimed beneficence of the Empire was its system of laws, and by the nineteenth century there was great pride in spreading the benefits of English law around the world. Perhaps the best-known principle of that law was the equality of individuals – that all were equally subject to its strictures, and that all could equally claim its protection. This had been established for the Empire as early as 1774, when in the case of Campbell v. Hall Lord Mansfield declared that “an Englishman in Ireland, Minorca or the Plantations has no privilege distinct from the natives.” A century later the noted political thinker and legal adviser to the Government of India Henry Maine observed that the Government “is bound, by the moral conditions of its existence, to apply the modern principle of equality, in all its various forms, to the people of India – equality between religions, equality between races, equality between individuals, in the eye of the law.