Trials of Sovereignty
Mercy, Violence, and the Making of Criminal Law in British India, 1857–1922
Seiten
2024
Cambridge University Press (Verlag)
978-1-009-55354-4 (ISBN)
Cambridge University Press (Verlag)
978-1-009-55354-4 (ISBN)
Trials of Sovereignty offers the first legal history of mercy and discretion in nineteenth and twentieth-century India. Key chapters examine royal amnesty, codification, capital punishment, and sedition. It will benefit students and scholars interested in legal history, South Asian studies, criminology, and imperial history.
Trials of Sovereignty offers the first legal history of mercy and discretion in nineteenth and twentieth-century India. Through a study of large-scale amnesties, the prerogative powers of pardon, executive commutation, and judicial sentencing practices, Alastair McClure argues that discretion represented a vital facet of colonial rule. In a bloody penal order, officials and judges consistently offered reduced sentences and pardons for select subjects, encouraging others to approach state institutions and confer the colonial state with greater legitimacy. Mercy was always a contested expression of sovereign power that risked exposing colonial weakness. This vulnerability was gradually recognized by colonial subjects who deployed a range of legal and political strategies to interrogate state power and question the lofty promises of British colonial justice. By the early twentieth century, the decision to break the law and reject imperial overtures of mercy had developed into a crucial expression of anticolonial politics.
Trials of Sovereignty offers the first legal history of mercy and discretion in nineteenth and twentieth-century India. Through a study of large-scale amnesties, the prerogative powers of pardon, executive commutation, and judicial sentencing practices, Alastair McClure argues that discretion represented a vital facet of colonial rule. In a bloody penal order, officials and judges consistently offered reduced sentences and pardons for select subjects, encouraging others to approach state institutions and confer the colonial state with greater legitimacy. Mercy was always a contested expression of sovereign power that risked exposing colonial weakness. This vulnerability was gradually recognized by colonial subjects who deployed a range of legal and political strategies to interrogate state power and question the lofty promises of British colonial justice. By the early twentieth century, the decision to break the law and reject imperial overtures of mercy had developed into a crucial expression of anticolonial politics.
Alastair McClure is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Hong Kong. His research has appeared in History Workshop Journal, Law and History Review, and Modern Asian Studies.
List of Figures and Tables; Acknowledgements; List of Abbreviations; Introduction; 1. Forgetting War and Punishing Crime; 2. The Peace: The Queen's Proclamation and the Politics of Forgiveness; 3. The Code: Judges, Juries and Punishing Difference; 4. Discretion, the Death Penalty, and the Criminal Trial; 5. Pardons and Scaffolds; 6. Tilak's Radical Innocence: Mercy, Sedition, and the State Trial; 7. Gandhi's Guilt and the Return of War; Conclusion; Epilogue; Select Bibliography; Index.
| Erscheinungsdatum | 19.11.2024 |
|---|---|
| Reihe/Serie | Studies in Legal History |
| Zusatzinfo | Worked examples or Exercises |
| Verlagsort | Cambridge |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Themenwelt | Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Militärgeschichte |
| Recht / Steuern ► Rechtsgeschichte | |
| Recht / Steuern ► Strafrecht ► Kriminologie | |
| Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Spezielle Soziologien | |
| ISBN-10 | 1-009-55354-2 / 1009553542 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-009-55354-4 / 9781009553544 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
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