Description:
Norms beyond Empire seeks to rethink the relationship between law and empire by emphasizing the role of local normative production. While European imperialism is often viewed as being able to shape colonial law and government to its image, this volume argues that early modern empires could never monolithically control how these processes unfolded. Examining the Iberian empires in Asia, it seeks to look at norms as a means of escaping the often too narrow concept of law and look beyond empire to highlight the ways in which law-making and local normativities frequently acted beyond colonial rule. The ten chapters explore normative production from this perspective by focusing on case studies from China, India, Japan, and the Philippines.
Contributors are: Manuel Bastias Saavedra, Marya Svetlana T. Camacho, Luisa Stella de Oliveira Coutinho Silva, Rômulo da Silva Ehalt, Patricia Souza de Faria, Fupeng Li, Miguel Rodrigues Lourenço, Abisai Perez Zamarripa, Marina Torres Trimállez, and Ângela Barreto Xavier.
Review Quotes: "Norms beyond Empire is an impressive, well-researched book composed of nine case studies plus an introductory essay, which amply does what Saavedra promises: a comparative, interdisciplinary study of the coexistence and interaction of different normative orders across China, South India, Japan, and the Philippines." - Alexandre Coello de la Rosa, Universitat Pompeu Fabra - ICREA Academia, in: Journal of Jesuit Studies 10 (2023), p. 141
"This edited volume opens up new avenues for the exploration of law, specifically 'norms, ' within the early modern Spanish and Portuguese empires in Asia. ... The volume thus fulfils a major objective of what has become known as 'global legal history': transcending the narrow confines of law and embracing a broader understanding of what exercised a binding force among Iberian and Asian societies and cultures." - Pedro Cardim, NOVA University Lisbon, in: Journal of Early Modern History 28 (2024)
"The volume's greatest strength is that while focused on one particular set of contexts in early modern Asia, it transcends its geographical and chronological limits, and invites the reader to reexamine old orthodoxies regarding the state, law and society, be they in Asia, Europe, or elsewhere." - Stuart M. McManus, in: Ler História 81 (2022) [Online]