Research seminar: “Bees without Stings:” Courts and Commercial Enforcement in the British Empire

This chapter looks at the complex relationship between commerce and courts around the British Empire. In contrast to works that have articulated an antagonistic relationship between commerce and British courts in the early modern period, it argues for a more nuanced and sympathetic understanding. Despite the challenges of using courts, they remained necessary and desirable to traders. Yet traders’ ability to use legal enforcement institutions was highly dependent upon local court systems and prevailing cultural norms. Without enforcement powers, courts had limited utility. In fact, many courts had greater powers than hitherto appreciated. The paper examines substantive and procedural rules that enhanced courts’ enforcement powers in Britain’s Atlantic and Indian colonies. Merchants consistently preferred ordered and regular courts to relying solely on informal institutions, and worked to bolster them around the empire. In these ways, merchants’ reliance on the courts and lobbying for legal reforms strengthened the institutions of empire.

Hunter Harris is a historian of the British Empire in the early modern period, with interests in legal and economic history. He is currently Departmental Lecturer in History at the University of Oxford and was previously Postdoctoral Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. His first book, Trade’s Empire: Merchants, Law, and the British Empire is under contract with the Omohundro Institute Press, and his work has appeared in the American Journal of Legal History, The Conversation, and other outlets.