James Epstein is Distinguished Professor of History, Department of History, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee. His previous publications include In Practice: Studies in the Language and Culture of Popular Politics in Modern Britain (2003) and Radical Expression: Political Language, Ritual, and Symbol in England, 1790–1850 (1994).

• Introduction; 1. Politics of colonial sensation; 2. A gentleman's way in the world; 3. 'Only answerable to God and conscience': justice unbounded by law; 4. Ruling narratives; 5. The radical underworld goes colonial; 6. In search of free labor; 7. Conspiracy in the archive; Epilogue: moving on.

'In this this rollicking, sensational tale of imperial misrule, James Epstein takes readers into the colonial underworld peopled by those rogues and scoundrels who both represented British colonial power and defied it … Drawing on legal records, parliamentary debate, personal memoirs, print culture and the uneven, fragmented remains of the colonial archive, he weaves together the fractious histories of Thomas Picton and William Fullarton, suturing their clash of wills to the most important questions of the day: the rule of law, the fate of free labor and the career of liberalism in and outside the metropole … Epstein never lets the men and women of color whose suffering was the scandal of colonial rule fall below our sightline … postcolonial history at its best: erudite, breathtaking, subversive - and portable … to a host of other imperial times and places …' Antoinette Burton, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign