Execution and Empire: A History of Judicial Killing Under British Colonial Rule 1815-1980

这个项目是对从拿破仑战争结束到二十世纪末整个大英帝国的司法执行的比较研究。尽管历史学家对惩罚产生了极大的兴趣，但尚未汇编英国殖民惩罚的清单，也没有任何关于跨空间和跨时间司法执行的范围和范围的分析。该项目的总体目标是评估英国殖民地的法律、实践和对死刑的看法独立于大都市方向发展的程度，以及这告诉我们英国法律在世界不同地区的移植和接受情况。这个项目旨在回答：我们如何解释1815年至1980年期间英国殖民地在法律、实践和司法执行方面的差异？为了回答这个问题，该项目重点关注纳塔尔殖民地、斐济和海峡殖民地。这些案例研究也是在广泛的全球背景下进行的。该项目的主要研究方法是档案研究。这项档案研究将在英国和每一个被调查的地区进行。这一办法不仅提供了一系列材料，包括统计数据和定性材料，而且还确保该项目的论点以殖民地的经验为基础，而不是大都会的人对殖民死刑往往遥不可及的理解。该项目的优势在于其及时性和相关性。英联邦许多国家保留死刑的根源在于它们的殖民历史，这些历史是理解当今死刑立法和实践的差异以及关于废除死刑的争论的关键。

This project is a comparative study of judicial execution across the British Empire, from the end of the Napoleonic Wars to the late twentieth century. Despite the enormous interest in punishment amongst historians, no inventory of British colonial punishment has yet been compiled, and nor has there been any analysis of the range and scope of judicial execution across space and over time.The overall goal of the project is to assess the degree to which law, practices and perceptions of capital punishment in British colonies developed independently of metropolitan direction, and what this tells us about the transplantation and reception of British law in different parts of the world. This project sets out to answer: How do we explain differences in the law, practice and perception of judicial execution in British colonies between 1815 and 1980? In order to answer this question, the project focuses on the colonies of Natal, Fiji, and the Straits Settlements. These case studies are also set within a broad global context. The principal methodology of the project is archival research. This archival research will take place in both Britain and each of the territories under investigation. This approach not only provides access to a range of material including statistical data and qualitative material, it also ensures that the arguments of the project are grounded in the experiences in the colonies, rather than the often remote understandings of colonial capital punishment that were held by those in the metropole. The strength of this project is its timeliness and relevance. The retention of capital punishment in many nations of the British Commonwealth is rooted in their colonial histories, which are key to an understanding of the variance in the legislation and practice of capital punishment, and debates about abolition, today.