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Research and writing leading to a book on the French Empire’s legal system in the Indian Ocean.

“A World at Court: Nested Legality and French Empire across the Indian Ocean” is about the local litigants and colonial officials who transformed the practice of law in French colonies in the Indian Ocean in the 18th and 19th centuries. It offers an account of French and French-administered “native” courts of law in India, Réunion, and Mauritius. It unearths the permeability of law to novel modes of bringing suits, deciding verdicts, and enacting legal power. Across a geography that integrates South Asia, the Indian Ocean, Africa, and Europe, it charts transformations in colonial legal practice by analyzing judicial interactions that did not quite follow the letter of the law. It argues that French courts in the Indian Ocean relied on local modes of dispute resolution, even in jurisdictions that purportedly relied on European legal codes. They did so by courting local intervention at every stage of the judicial process, thus allowing alternative legal sites “nest” within French courts.