Scandal of Colonial Rule Power and Subversion in the British Atlantic during the Age of Revolution

In 1806 General Thomas Picton, Britain's first governor of Trinidad, was brought to trial for the torture of a free mulatto named Louisa Calderon and for overseeing a regime of terror over the island's slave population. James Epstein offers a fascinating account of the unfolding of this colonial drama. He shows the ways in which the trial and its investigation brought empire 'home' and exposed the disjuncture between a national self-image of humane governance and the brutal realities of colonial rule. He uses the trial to open up a range of issues, including colonial violence and norms of justice, the status of the British subject, imperial careering, visions of development after slavery, slave conspiracy and the colonial archive. He reveals how Britain's imperial regime became more authoritarian, hierarchical and militarised but also how unease about abuses of power and of the rights of colonial subjects began to grow.

Introduction; 1. Politics of colonial sensation; 2. A gentleman's way in the world; 3. 'Only answerable to God and conscience': justice unbounded by law; 4. Ruling narratives; 5. The radical underworld goes colonial; 6. In search of free labor; 7. Conspiracy in the archive; Epilogue: moving on.

A dramatic history of the British public's confrontation with the iniquities of nineteenth-century colonial rule. James Epstein uses the trial of the first governor of Trinidad for the torture of a freewoman of color to reassess the nature of British colonialism and the ways in which empire troubled the metropolitan imagination.

James Epstein is Distinguished Professor of History, Department of History, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee. His previous publications include In Practice: Studies in the Language and Culture of Popular Politics in Modern Britain (2003) and Radical Expression: Political Language, Ritual, and Symbol in England, 1790–1850 (1994).