What if order and disorder are not really opposing forces? What if the perceived appearance of order (colonial legal authority) requires the existence of disorder (civil service corruption)? In this slim, well-researched volume, Jonathan Saha documents a “self-perpetuating logic” where civil service corruption in Burma's Irrawaddy Delta was “a product of colonial rule, acquiesced with by the colonial government, and thereafter used to justify the structural racial hierarchies of the administration” (96, 130). He demonstrates how the colonial bureaucracy itself gave embezzlers, bribe solicitors, and policemen who wanted to frame others the mechanisms to pull off their crimes. When such criminal activity was committed by Burmese and Indian civil servants, it offered British officials apparent proof of colonial peoples' unfitness for self-rule. Ultimately, Saha argues that civil service corruption did not weaken the colonial state; instead, corruption and the exercise of state power thrived off of each other (71). Focusing on how civil servants used the inner workings of the institutions of British colonial governance (courts, police) to commit crimes, Law, Disorder and the Colonial State challenges two key historiographical assumptions. The assertion that modernity was ushered in by a colonial state that ended corruption does not seem appropriate if the colonial bureaucracy made further corruption possible. Explanations of interpersonal dynamics that fall back on colonizer-colonized distinctions do not make sense in the case of civil servants who are also colonial subjects (17, 7).

An impressive array of historical sources underpins Saha's research, including petitions and case files related to corruption investigations, and Times of Burma coverage, as well as memoirs (and a novel) written by high-ranking British civil servants. The book's four main chapters approach the analysis of corruption from different conceptual angles. Chapter 1 employs the phrases “economy of discipline” and “arithmetic of punishment” to suggest that higher-ups (township administrators known as my-oks, police commissioners) were more likely to receive minor punishments such as a demotion or transfer than clerks found guilty of corruption. After describing several possible reasons for this phenomenon, Saha ultimately seems to settle on the argument that keeping corrupt Asian civil servants in their positions allowed British officials to justify the “racial division of the colonial bureaucracy” (36). Chapter 2 explores the idea of “performative enactment” of the colonial state through the day-to-day behaviors of its representatives. Examining the career of the spectacularly corrupt police inspector Pakiri, Saha persuasively shows how a representative of the colonial state could fake evidence of crimes to extort sexual favors and bribes. Chapter 3 picks up the racial hierarchy argument initially advanced in chapter 1, suggesting that the structure of a colonial government where white British deputy commissioners responded to petitions alleging corruption among Burmese civil servants inherently reinforced British claims of superiority. Chapter 4 switches to gender analysis, arguing that “performing masculinity” became an essential component of the job description for both indigenous and British civil servants in Burma amid fears that the wives of Burmese civil servants emasculated their husbands by taking too active an interest in state and commercial affairs (125). Saha then extends this emphasis on reclaiming masculinity via the exercise of state power to an examination of how lower-level investigators deliberately sabotaged investigations of rape cases (119). Overall, Law, Disorder and the Colonial State succeeds in demonstrating two insightful observations about how the British Empire functioned in Burma. First, tolerating corruption was seen by British officials as a pragmatic trade-off to justify the continuation of empire (5). Second, the daily practices of making money and settling scores were firmly embedded into the mechanisms of colonial power (14).

But from page to page, this is a challenging book to work through. Saha presents intriguing insights that do not always fit together or flow in a useful direction. Some of the most vital definitions, explanations, and versions of arguments will not be encountered by readers until they are well into the book. An excellent description of how the British colonial bureaucracy was organized in the Irrawaddy Delta suddenly appears at the end of chapter 1 (44). The phrase “performative resources of state power” is not defined until the end of chapter 3, despite being central to the book's vocabulary and arguments (71). While the main chapters do not have formal conclusions, I would recommend reading the last few pages of each chapter before one begins the book. The clearest explanation of terms and arguments are often located there.

A second organizational issue involves the relationship between the stated purpose of chapters and the arguments and evidence they actually contain. Chapter 1, “Making Misconduct,” is ostensibly designed to explain the book's analytical constructs while chapter 3's title, “Whiter than White,” implies that it is where the racial hierarchy of British rule will be deconstructed. However, chapter 1 contains the clearest version of Saha's overall argument about the role race played in reinforcing British rule (36), while sections of chapter 3 seem to be more about feuds between local Burmese power brokers than about race (83–86, 88–89). It seems likely that that the intensive discussion of race well before the chapter about race reflects the reality of the historical phenomenon that was British rule in Burma. Saha emphasizes the “messy realities of state power” in the Irrawaddy Delta, highlighting how the levers of colonial power embedded themselves into multiple aspects of subjects' daily lives and identities (2). This might also explain the heavy foreshadowing of chapter 4's arguments about masculinity that repeatedly pop up in chapter 2's discussion of Inspector Pakiri. But, if it is the case that racial and gendered discourses so intensively permeated discussions of civil service corruption, then Saha's attempt to cordon them off into discrete chapters is confusing.

For readers not heavily steeped in Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, and Clifford Geertz, Saha's reliance on vocabulary such as “performative enactment of the colonial state” would be incredibly overwhelming (47). One can follow his basic premises that individual civil servants made the state a reality through their day-to-day behaviors and that what the colonial state represented to colonized people could vary depending on the particular behavior of the civil servant they interacted with. But, the evidence presented throughout the book loses its significance when every corrupt act is made into a performance of state power. In addition, when Saha extends his arguments to the purported audience for these performances, his analysis gets harder to follow. Early in the book, he asserts that the “nature of the state was in the eye of the beholder” (11). But the nature of the sources he has access to limits the claims he can make about who these audiences were or what they actually thought. In the case of Inspector Pakiri's victims, Saha argues that “state power was theatrical, self-confirming, and despotic” (68). This claim is clearly documented with evidence from files associated with the many court proceedings against Pakiri. But for colonial subjects who were not drawn into court cases or did not file petitions against civil servants, questions about their perceptions of the colonial state remain.