Shane Chalmers, University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law, has posted Colonialism and Law, which appears in Elgar Encyclopedia of Comparative Law, ed. Jan Smits, Jaakko Husa, Madalena Narciso, and Catherine Valcke (Edward Elgar, 2023):
This entry offers an overview of the field of 'colonialism and law'. It begins with the field's origins in the 1980s, the emergence of anthropology and history scholarship exploring the role of law in European colonisation, along with a parallel set of political and literary studies foregrounding the violence of colonisation and the possibilities of decolonisation. The entry then outlines some of the major thematic movements of this dynamic field from the 1990s through to the 2020s, with an eye to the future. This includes studies of law as an instrument (of colonial and anti-colonial processes); of law as produced (by colonisation) and as productive (of colonial forms of authority, subjectivity and relations); of law as a site (for colonial struggles, transformations and movements) and as an imaginary (implicated in Orientalisms, old and new); of law as a gift (from Civilisation to Development) and as a measure (of such 'achievements').
--Dan Ernst
