-
Views
-
Cite
Cite
David Edwards, John M. Collins. Martial Law and English Laws, c. 1500–c. 1700., The American Historical Review, Volume 122, Issue 5, December 2017, Pages 1683–1684, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/122.5.1683
Close - Share Icon Share
Extract
The ambitious Martial Law and English Laws encompasses more than its title suggests. Though centered upon the early modern period and developments under the Tudor and Stuart monarchies, it attempts to recover the history more generally of one of the most important strands of law employed by the English Crown (and Parliament) from the late Middle Ages to the apex of empire in the nineteenth century. Its chronological scope is matched by its geographical sweep, as the book follows the evolution of martial law as it was practiced first in England, and later in the English colonial territories overseas in Ireland, the Caribbean, North America, Asia, and Africa. John M. Collins deserves much praise for this broad approach, as the book succeeds admirably in its goal of revealing the adaptability of martial law in the global history of English law and government and the projection of English power.
In terms of historiography the book is timely. While the use of martial law in early modern England has attracted much comment in many of the major debates about “the ancient constitution,” and Crown, Parliament, and absolutism, this sort of law has remained poorly understood. From the writings of the great nineteenth-century legal scholars William Blackstone and Frederic William Maitland until very recently, historians have continually asserted that martial law was not really law at all. According to this line of thought, martial law was an exceptional measure, existing outside the body of “the king’s laws,” and it was invariably arbitrary and unlimited in scope. Despite intermittent dissenting views, this has remained the orthodox interpretation. Collins lays it waste. In an incisive prologue, he demonstrates how martial law evolved as one of many laws available to the medieval kings of England “to cast doom and judgment” upon their subjects (7). While there was no specific martial law per se, there were nonetheless many laws in force relating to war and to martial matters that were destined to provide “a wellspring of ideas” for martial law’s future use (13). These included the ordinances of war for the king’s armies, which stretched back into the thirteenth century and earlier, and the constantly evolving treason laws, which enabled successive monarchs post-Magna Carta to deliver swifter and more severe punishments on wayward subjects and enemies by employing often very flexible definitions of what constituted “wartime.” As a result, with the advent of Tudor rule in 1485, Henry VII and his successors did not need to invent martial law from scratch, but rather were able to fashion it selectively from a large body of old laws and procedures.
