Imperial Standard Time

This article examines the establishment of globally standardized time under law in colonial India. Despite pretensions to abstract universality, globally standardized time was and remains a particular construction, built on the basis of particular interests. Since its creation, select parties have competed to dominate the production and operation of globally standardized time, and their competition has been steeped with law. In short, globally standardized time and what we today call transnational law are mutually implicated in the construction of one another. The history of their interaction in colonial India makes clear the ways they work together as a sort of technology, produced and maintained for particular purposes. Those purposes include the capacity to stabilize expectations and establish normative baselines in support of transactional networks across borders, and ultimately around the world. The process continues to this day, with standardized time and law interacting to enable and disable a changing array of legal practices and expectations internationally. The establishment of globally standardized time under law in colonial India reveals the foundations of this interrelationship, including imperial interests and ideologies embedded in its material development.