| Lauren A. Benton | |
| Birth Place: | Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. |
| Occupation: | Historian |
| Education: | Harvard University (BA) Johns Hopkins University (PhD) |
| Workplaces: | Yale University, Vanderbilt University New York University |
| Notable Ideas: | jurisdictional politics, legal posturing, middle power, interpolity law |
Lauren Benton (born 1956) is an American historian known for her works on the global history of empires, colonial and imperial law, and the history of international law. She is Barton M. Biggs Professor of History and Professor of Law at Yale University.[1]
Lauren Benton grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, and attended high school at the Park School of Baltimore in Brooklandville, Maryland. She graduated from Harvard University and received a Ph.D. in Anthropology and History from Johns Hopkins University in 1987.[2]
Benton was professor of history at New York University and professor of history and law at Vanderbilt University before joining the faculty at Yale. She served as Dean for Humanities and Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Science at New York University and as Dean of the College of Arts and Science at Vanderbilt University.
In 2019, Benton received the Toynbee Prize for significant contributions to global history.
Benton's book Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400–1900 mapped a novel perspective centered on the study of jurisdictional conflicts in colonial societies. Introducing the term “jurisdictional politics,” Benton analyzed the impact of colonial legal conflicts on global legal regimes, state formation, and the rise of the modern international order.[7] In 2003, Law and Colonial Cultures was awarded the World History Association's Jerry Bentley Book Prize[8], the James Willard Hurst Book Prize.[9], and the PEWS Immanuel Wallerstein Memorial Book Award from the American Sociological Association.
Benton's book A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400-1900 showed that empires did not seek to control vast overseas territories but instead used varied legal practices to claim and control a patchwork of enclaves and corridors. A Search for Sovereignty introduced the term “legal posturing” to describe attempts by imperial agents, including pirates, to show that they were serving the interests of sovereign sponsors. The book also traced the influence of legal conflicts in European empires on definitions of sovereignty and other elements of early international law.[10]
Rage for Order: The British Empire and the History of International Law, 1800-1850, coauthored with Lisa Ford, uncovers a vast project of global legal reform in the early nineteenth century. Benton and Ford introduce the terms "middle power" and "vernacular constitutionalism" in describing global ordering. The book argues that imperial law prefigured international law and the rise of the interstate order.
They Called It Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence (Princeton University Press) traces the way imperial small wars made global order. It argues that pervasive practices of plunder and of imperial intervention set the stage for atrocities.
Before becoming a scholar of imperial history, Benton wrote about culture and economic development. Her book Invisible Factories: The Informal Economy and Industrial Development in Spain examined industrial restructuring and the “informal sector,” or underground economy, in Spain during the transition to democracy of the 1970s and early 1980s.[5] Benton also co-edited a volume with Alejandro Portes and Manuel Castells on the informal sector in comparative economic development.[6]
Benton continues to investigate historical processes of regional and global ordering. Her work connects the study of empires and the history of international law by studying what Benton calls "global legal politics." She coined the term "interpolity law" to refer to global patterns of legal interactions in eras before the rise and proliferation of nation-states.