The king's plunder, the king's bodies : prize laws, the British Empire and the modern legal order /Rahul Govind.

"This book focuses on the King's rights of conquest, plunder and prize, as well as allegiance and subjecthood, establishing a monarchical form of the British Empire between 1600 and 1900, notwithstanding King-in-Parliament. Special attention is given to its essential role in the East India Company's government as well as its conquests, as much as its taking the shape of 'direct' Crown rule after 1857-58. Such forms of sovereign territorialization, the 'King's bodies' and 'corporations', local and personal forms of distinctively royal jurisdiction, raise questions on the nature of subjecthood and ultimately play a crucial role in the development of 'international law' in the late nineteenth century."--