Just Despots: The Cultural Construction of Imperial Constitutionalism

Abstract

This article explores the significance of widespread debates in empires about the exercise of arbitrary power. As particularly evident in the decades around the turn of the nineteenth century, colonial conflicts often centered on the nature and scope of the legal prerogatives of middling authorities. The focus on the proper relation of multiple authorities within composite polities was accompanied by claims about particular configurations of rights, by references to divisible sovereignty, and by legal strategies that appealed to the intervention of imperial sovereigns in the exercise of judicial power within private or subordinate jurisdictions. The result was an intimate connection between persistent references to petty despotism and an emerging framework for imperial constitutional politics.