# Violence, Misrecognition, and Place: Legal Envelopment and Colonial Governmentality in the Upper Skeena River, British Columbia, 1888

## TL;DR

The paper explores how colonial legal practices in British Columbia were shaped by environment and atmosphere, revealing non-rational methods of colonial control.

## Contribution

It introduces the concept of 'affective atmospheres' to analyze colonial legal expansion and its relationship with the physical and sensory environment.

## Key findings

- Colonial legal practices were influenced by sensory and affective experiences, not just rational legal frameworks.
- The physical environment played a constitutive role in shaping colonial legal arrangements.
- The colonial regime ignored the contextual origins of law, promoting myths of English law's universality and superiority.

## Abstract

This paper is concerned with exploring legal atmospheres during colonial expansionism and the early period of confederation of British Columbia. By describing the theatrical and performative aspects of legal colonialism, the archival documents from this time represent interesting, yet oft-overlooked, significances that attention to sensory and affective experiences captures. Examining “affective atmospheres” disclosed in such colonial settings reveals ways that the colonial regime promulgated its influence in non-rational, non-legal manners. As well, drawing out the material conditions of topography shows how the environment acts more than just a backdrop for the staging of legal expansionism, as it acts also as a constitutive force in the development of colonial legal arrangements. At the same time, the colonial regime was forgetful of these same contextual, topographical, and atmospheric origins of law insofar as it promulgated myths of the universality, objectivity, and superiority of English law.