Penalties of Empire

‘We must have a procedure – if we are going to hang anyone – that is just,’ said Chief Justice Sir Francis Piggott in 1909, on discovering that Chinese persons accused of murder were being denied interpretation in Hong Kong’s courts. Due process, no matter how costly or inconvenient, was ‘one of the penalties of empire,’ he declared.

Penalties of Empire explores how judges, juries and lawyers strove to deliver justice during the 150 years when the death penalty was in force in Hong Kong. Nine main chapters focus on key capital trials in the first century of British rule. Among the cases are piracies, assassinations, crimes of passion, and murders committed from desperation. These chapters describe the proceedings and participants in court. They also examine the public debates surrounding each case and the exercise of mercy by governors. Two final chapters discuss the decline of the death penalty after World War II, its suspension after 1966, and the controversies leading to its formal abolition in 1993. Penalties of Empire traces the evolution of criminal justice at its highest levels. It also offers a prism for understanding some of the broader forces at work in Hong Kong’s history.

Christopher Munn served as an administrative officer in the Hong Kong Government and in various positions in the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. His publications include Anglo-China: Chinese People and British Rule in Hong Kong, 1841–1880 and (with May Holdsworth) Crime, Justice and Punishment in Colonial Hong Kong.

Dr Munn is a distinguished scholar in the legal history of Hong Kong. This impressive work focuses on the administration of justice in capital cases in the context of the conditions of the society at the time. His account of events and people is lively and masterly. His observations and insights are illuminating and perceptive. This outstanding book deserves to be widely read.’

— The Honourable Andrew Li Kwok Nang, First Chief Justice of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (1997–2010)

‘This book is an extraordinary attempt to approach European colonial culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries from an entirely fresh perspective by scrutinising the work that courts did. By excavating the judicial archives, Chris Munn gives us an entirely new account of how colonial justice both worked and failed to achieve its aims.’

— Timothy Brook, author of The Price of Collapse: The Little Ice Age and the Fall of Ming China