Colonial Justice: White Violence and the Rule of Law in British India

传统上，法治被认为是大英帝国赋予混乱和无序的印度社会的好处之一。然而，档案记录中充斥着英国人谋杀、残害和袭击印度人的事件？然后逍遥法外。这项研究的前提是，白人暴力是印度帝国核心最明显但又最严密保密的秘密之一。司法是英国殖民国家的基本特征。帝国的意识形态，公正的法治，将殖民统治的秩序与殖民前统治的混乱区分开来。作为殖民统治的工具，法律也不得不维持英国？S对印度的控制。不偏不倚的正义原则和帝国命令的必要性之间的紧张关系往往会围绕着对暴力英国人的审判展开，暴露出殖民正义的天平因种族的重量而失衡的事实。这项研究通过白人暴力的棱镜来考察法律话语和实践之间的脱节。该项目的驱动假设是，殖民行政当局设计了一个编纂的法治，以控制不守规矩的英国人和他们被殖民的印度臣民。这项拟议的研究将法律领域视为社会和政治争论的场所，遵循殖民官员为建立统一法治所做的自上而下的努力，以及包括英国种植园主、印度农民和反殖民民族主义者在内的各种当地行为者构成的自下而上的挑战。这项跨学科的研究利用官方记录、判例法、私人文件、个人回忆录和报纸报道，探索了法治如何在通过构建新的斗争领域来约束自己的权威的同时，迎来了一个新的权力制度。

The rule of law is conventionally understood to be one of the benefits bestowed by the British Empire upon a chaotic and disorganized Indian society. However, the archival record is full of incidents of Britons murdering, maiming and assaulting Indians ? and getting away with it. This study is based on the premise that white violence was one of the most visible yet closely guarded secrets at the heart of the empire in India.The administration of justice was a foundational feature of the British colonial state. An ideology of empire, an impartial rule of law distinguished the order of colonial rule from the chaos of pre-colonial rule. An instrument of colonial control, law also had to maintain Britain?s hold on India. The tension between the principle of impartial justice and the imperative of imperial command tended to snap around trials of violent Britons, exposing the fact that the scales of colonial justice were imbalanced by the weight of race. This study examines the disjuncture between the discourse and practice of law through the prism of white violence. The driving hypothesis of the project is that a codified rule of law was designed by colonial administrators to control both unruly Britons and their colonized Indian subjects. Approaching the legal arena as a site of social and political contestation, the proposed research follows the top-down efforts of colonial officials to establish a uniform rule of law as well as the bottom-up challenges posed by a variety of local actors, including British planters, Indian peasants, and anti-colonial nationalists. Drawing on official records, case law, private papers, personal memoirs and newspaper reports, this interdisciplinary study explores how the rule of law ushered in a new regime of power even as it restrained its own authority by constructing a new terrain of struggle.