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

殖民司法：英属印度的白人暴力与法治

• 批准号: 0752260
• 负责人: ELIZABETH KOLSKY
• 金额: $ 9.78万
• 依托单位: Villanova University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-05-01 至 2010-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0752260&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Colonial; Justice; White; Violence; Rule

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.

传统上，法治被理解为大英帝国给予混乱无序的印度社会的好处之一。但是，档案记录中却充斥着英国人谋杀、残害和袭击印度人的事件？这项研究是基于这样一个前提，即白色暴力是印度帝国心脏最明显但又受到严密保护的秘密之一。司法是英国殖民国家的基本特征。一种帝国的意识形态，一种公正的法治，将殖民统治的秩序与前殖民统治的混乱区分开来。作为殖民地控制的工具，法律也不得不维持英国？让我们抓住印度。公正司法的原则和帝国命令的必要性之间的紧张关系往往会在对暴力不列颠人的审判中突然爆发，暴露出殖民司法的天平因种族的重量而失衡的事实。本研究透过白色暴力的棱镜，检视法律话语与实践之间的脱节。该项目的驱动假设是，殖民地管理者设计了一个成文的法治，以控制不守规矩的英国人和他们的殖民地印度臣民。接近法律的竞技场作为一个网站的社会和政治咨询站，拟议的研究如下自上而下的努力，殖民地官员建立一个统一的法治，以及自下而上的各种当地演员，包括英国种植园主，印度农民，和反殖民民族主义者提出的挑战。利用官方记录，判例法，私人文件，个人回忆录和报纸报道，这一跨学科的研究探讨了法治如何迎来了一个新的政权，即使它通过构建一个新的斗争领域来限制自己的权威。