Lauren Benton (historian)


Lauren Benton is an American historian known for her works on the history of empires, colonial and imperial law, and the history of international law. She is the Nelson O. Tyrone, Jr. Professor of History and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University.

Biography

Lauren Benton was born in 1956 in Baltimore, Maryland, and attended high school at the Park School of Baltimore in Brooklandville, Maryland. She graduated from Harvard University in 1978, with a concentration in economics. Benton received her Ph.D. in Anthropology and History from Johns Hopkins University in 1987.Lauren Benton #cite note-4|
Benton served as Dean for Humanities and as Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Science at New York University, where she was Professor of History from 2003 to 2015 and Affiliate Professor of Law from 2008 to 2015. In 2015, Benton joined the faculty of Vanderbilt University and served as Dean of the College of Arts and Science from 2015 to 2018. She is the Nelson O. Tyrone, Jr. Professor of History and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University. Benton is President-elect of the American Society for Legal History.
In 2019, Benton received the for significant contributions to global history.

Research

Benton’s early scholarship focused on 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.Lauren Benton #cite note-5| Benton also co-edited a volume with Alejandro Portes and Manuel Castells on the informal sector in comparative economic development.Lauren Benton #cite note-6|
Benton radically changed the focus of her research with Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400-1900, which 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.Lauren Benton #cite note-7| In 2003, Law and Colonial Cultures was awarded the World History Association Book AwardLauren Benton #cite note-8| and the James Willard Hurst Book Prize.Lauren Benton #cite note-9|
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 various legal practices to claim and rule 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.Lauren Benton #cite note-10|
Rage for Order: The British Empire and the History of International Law, 1800-1850, which Benton coauthored with Lisa Ford, appeared in 2016 and 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 tracing the efforts of British imperial officials and reformers to reimagine and remake the imperial constitution. The book also analyzes the way imperial law prefigured international law and the rise of the interstate order.
Benton continues to investigate historical processes of regional and global ordering. Her work connects the study of empires and the history of international law and focuses on what Benton calls "global legal politics." She developed the term "interpolity law" to refer to global patterns of legal interactions in eras before the rise and proliferation of nation-states.

Selected Published works

;Books
;Selected Articles