Penalties of empire: capital trials in colonial Hong Kong

Colonial policing scholarship has long debated whether imperial law enforcement was primarily coercive or whether colonial administrators developed more nuanced strategies to govern diverse populations. Christopher Munn ’ s Penalties of Empire o ff ers a compelling intervention in this debate by examining capital punishment in colonial Hong Kong, not as a straightforward instrument of colonial domination, but as a ‘ contested node in the governance of law and order. ’ The book dis-mantles the familiar narrative of a draconian colonial master imposing the ultimate penalty on reluctant subjects until metropolitan humanitarianism fi nally prevailed. Instead, Munn reveals a complex stakeholder landscape: London ’ s concerns about legitimacy and precedent, Hong Kong administrators ’ pragmatism, the evidentiary and organisational limits of policing and prosecution