Between Litigation and Arbitration: Administering Legal Pluralism in Eighteenth-Century Bombay. Issue 3 (31st December 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Hodges, Leonard
• Is Part Of: Itinerario. Volume 42:Issue 3(2018)
• Page Start: 490
• Page End: 515
• Publication Date: 2018-12-31
• Subjects: Bombay, -- Legal Pluralism, -- Empire, -- Law, -- Mayor's Court; Netherlands -- Colonies -- Periodicals; Colonies -- History -- Periodicals; Imperialism -- History -- Periodicals; 909
• DOI: 10.1017/S0165115318000633
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0165-1153

Abstract

Abstract : This article uses the records of the Bombay Mayor's Court (1728–1798) to explore the ways in which an ostensibly English court of law attempted to administer law in a way that was acceptable to a cosmopolitan cast of litigants. I show how, due to the Court's popularity with Indian litigants, and the difficulties of its hybrid jurisprudence, the Court eventually moved to a model of formalised arbitration. In this arrangement, local Indian elites exercised considerable autonomy, while British judges gained an illicit commission. As such, the evidence from the Mayor's Court points to a novel iteration of legal pluralism in which ill-defined legal regimes came to blur and blend with each other in a single forum. I argue that this forces us to reconceptualise solely jurisdictional definitions of legal pluralism, which must be complimented with the study of a court's 'jurispractice'.