Cosmopolitan Parochialism: Magistrates and Imperial Revolution in New England, 1760-1800

From Massachusetts to Australia, justices of the peace and other equivalent magistrates provided an exportable unit of local government responsible for the vast majority of judicial and administrative decisions. This project investigates how shared assumptions about magisterial authority contributed to the construction of new jurisdictions incorporating non-English lands and peoples. In New England, this British model of local government proved so adaptable that it allowed justices of the peace to assert independence during a period of imperial crisis.