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世纪末整个大英帝国的司法执行进行比较研究。尽管历史学家对惩罚问题有着极大的兴趣，但英国殖民地的惩罚清单尚未汇编，也没有对司法执行的范围和范围进行跨空间和跨时间的分析。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在多大程度上独立于大都市的方向发展，这告诉我们英国法律在世界各地的移植和接受。本项目旨在回答：我们如何解释1815年至1980年间英国殖民地司法执行的法律、实践和观念的差异？为了回答这个问题，该项目的重点是纳塔尔、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。该项目的主要方法是档案研究。这项档案研究将在英国和每个被调查的领土进行。这种方法不仅提供了一系列材料，包括统计数据和定性材料，还确保项目的论点立足于殖民地的经验，而不是大都会对殖民地死刑的遥远理解。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，这是理解死刑立法和实践差异以及今天关于废除死刑的辩论的关键。

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.