Disrupting the empire of uniformity: Cultural negotiation and the emergence of modern constitutionalism

“Disrupting the Empire of Uniformity: Cultural Negotiation and the Emergence of Modern Constitutionalism” re-conceptualizes the emergence of modern constitutionalism in colonial English America through a cross-disciplinary study of the proprietary colonies of Maryland, Carolina, and Pennsylvania. Critics of modern constitutionalism depict its colonial emergence as a process of cultural assimilation—an “empire of uniformity” based in stadial, hierarchical accounts of culture and set in opposition to ancient constitutionalist strategies of cultural recognition. These accounts, however, have tended to rely on formalist interpretations of crown and covenant colonies, neglecting both the theory and practice of the third form of English colonial settlement: proprietary colonies, which were free from direct crown rule and marked by cultural, religious, and political diversity.; In response, the dissertation brings together historical, legal, and critical approaches to develop a more dynamic account of how proprietary colonies shaped modern constitutionalism's emergence. I argue, first, that English proprietary charters enabled proprietors to graft both ancient and more modern forms of governance—to assemble hybrid forms of constitutionalism. Proprietors, according to their charters, could draw from any of “the laws, customes, statutes, and rights of this our kingdom of England,” in accordance with the “assent advice and approbation of the freemen”; they assembled hybrid constitutions of republicanism, feudal law, statute law, and common law that were revised by settlers to meet the particular needs of settlement. Second, I contend that these hybrid forms of constitutionalism stressed the strategic negotiation, not outright assimilation, of cultural diversity. Each of the colonial foundings examined here—Maryland, Carolina, and Pennsylvania—exemplifies different characteristics of hybrid constitutionalism, and each differently unfolds the intricate problematics of cultural negotiation. Following its etymological roots (negotiare and otium, neg-otium), proprietary forms of cultural negotiation sought to have colonists manage the un-ease of settlement by establishing local knowledge and a local web of relations. Described by proprietors in constitutionalist terms, cultural negotiation encompassed practices of adaptation, accommodation, and toleration. Situated in context, these practices exhibited dimensions of instrumentality and strategy that ambiguate promises of just adjudication between culturally diverse groups. In conclusion, I argue that a historicized account of cultural negotiation serves as a crucial complication to recent post-colonial criticism and helps to shift the present's relationship to a complex and equivocal past.