Law was the primary instrument of colonial rule in the 19th-20th centuries

Evidence

Law is perhaps the single most important apparatus by way of which, in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the colonial state ruled over its populations. As Mahmood Mamdani puts it, “one single claim defined a shared civilizational project: whether rulers or ruled, Westerners or non-Westerners, all those subjects to the power of the state would be governed through imported Western law.” — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 38 (#expands, via linked claim)

Law is perhaps the single most important apparatus by way of which, in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the colonial state ruled over its populations. … Within this legal system, the state deploys “repressive and productive mechanisms” that participate in formulating “the new as that which has always been.” One of these mechanisms, and the basis for distinguishing and indeed discriminating between colonizer and colonized, was race. Such discrimination, however, was not enough, and further distinctions were introduced, sometimes even prior to the official establishment of Western law, prior to the full institution of colonial rule. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 38 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

We find in this fascinating episode a different style and substance of racial rule than under Belgian despotism. Law is taken relatively seriously, at least as the principal mode through which power is exerted and exercised. Racial rule, if only in its imitial exercise, was effected not so much upon the heads and bodies as through the hand of those — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 70 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Colonial law created an inside-outside sphere for customary law — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab: A History of the…, 39; Western law was the core apparatus of colonial rule — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab: A History of the…, 38; Indirect rule made customary law into an administrative tool of colonial control — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 70 (+15 more)

Broader Connections

• Western law was the core apparatus of colonial rule #expands (0.95) — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 38
• Colonial states ruled colonized populations chiefly through Western law and race #corroborates (0.94) — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 38
• British colonial rule operated through law rather than direct despotism #expands (0.92) — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 70
• Colonial violence stood inside the law, not outside it #complicates (0.79) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 411
• Colonial emergency law institutionalized its own failure to keep the rule of law #complicates (0.78) — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 50
• Colonial sovereignty operates outside legal and institutional rules of warfare #complicates (0.76) — Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics, 84