The Sovereign Subject And Colonial Justice

This volume analyzes the trial of Bahadur Shah, a watershed moment in the 19th-century colonial history of India. The trial of Bahadur Shah raises the contentious issue of sovereignty – trial of Emperor Bahadur Shah, de jure power by de facto claimant to power, the English East India Company. There has been a lot of confusion and controversy over the trial ever since the proceedings began – its main architects could not define if it really was a juristic trial, a court of enquiry, a court-martial, or a general enquiry? This book sheds light on this event through the original, unprinted manuscript of the Trial at the end of the uprising of the 1857. It critically investigates the trial, mainly its architecture, grammar, functioning, and findings from historical, political, and juridical perspectives to determine, as far as possible, the actual position of Emperor Bahadur Shah, his strengths, and his weaknesses. Further, it examines the Rebellion of 1857, particularly in Delhi, and Bahadur Shah’s role therein. A key reading on justice in colonial history, this volume will be of interest to researchers and scholars of colonial and imperial history, modern history, political theory, and South Asia studies. It will also be of great interest to general readers interested in learning about the colonization of India by the British and its commercial arm East India Company.

"This volume analyses the Trial of Bahadur Shah, a watershed moment in 19th century colonial history of India. The Trial of Bahadur Shah raises the contentious issue of sovereignty - trial of the Emperor Bahadur Shah, de jure power by de facto claimant to power, the English East India Company. There has been a lot of confusion and controversy over the Trial, ever since the proceedings began - its main architects could not define if it really was a juristic trial, a court of inquiry, a court-martial or a general inquiry? This book sheds light on this event through original unprinted manuscript of the Trial at end of the uprising of the 1857. It critically investigates the Trial, mainly its architecture, grammar, functioning and findings from historical, political and juridical perspectives to determine, as far as possible, the actual position of Emperor Bahadur Shah, his strengths and his weaknesses. Further, it examines the Rebellion of 1857, particularly in Delhi, and Bahadur Shah's role therein. A key reading on justice in colonial history, this volume will be of interest to researchers and scholars of colonial and imperial history, modern history, political theory, and South Asia studies. It will also of great interest to general readers interested in learning about the colonisation of India by the British and its commercial arm East India Company"--

One of the first philosophical approaches to the study of Korea’s ethnic nationalism, Christianity, the Sovereign Subject, and Ethnic Nationalism in Colonial Korea traces the impact of Christianity in the formation of Korean national identity, outlining the metaphysical origins of the concept of the sovereign subject. This monograph takes a meta-historical approach and engages the moral questions of Korean historiography amid the fraught politics of narrating colonialism and the postcolonial period. Indebted to Jacques Derrida’s philosophy of deconstruction and his framework of "hauntology," this monograph unpacks the ethical consequences of ethnic nationalism, exploring how Western metaphysics has haunted imaginations of freedom in colonial Korea. While most studies of modern Korean nationalism and (post)colonialism have taken a cultural, literary, or social scientific approach, this book draws on the thought of Jacques Derrida to offer an innovative intellectual history of Korea’s colonial period. By deconstructing the metaphysical claims of turn-of-the-century Protestant missionaries and early modern Korean intellectuals, the book showcases the relevance of Derrida’s philosophical method in the study of modern Korean history. This is a must read for scholars interested in Derrida, historiography, and Korean history.

Examines the shared cultural genealogy of popular Victorian novels and judicial opinions of the Privy Council.

Indigenous rights in Australia are at a crossroads. Over the past decade, neo-liberal governments have reasserted their claim to land in Australia, and refuse to either negotiate with the Indigenous owners or to make amends for the damage done by dispossession. Many Indigenous communities are in a parlous state, under threat both physically and culturally. In Sovereign Subjects some of Indigenous Australia's emerging and well-known critical thinkers examine the implications for Indigenous people of continuing to live in a state founded on invasion. They show how for Indigenous people, self-determination, welfare dependency, representation, cultural maintenance, history writing, reconciliation, land ownership and justice are all inextricably linked to the original act of dispossession by white settlers and the ongoing loss of sovereignty. At a time when the old left political agenda has run its course, and the new right is looking increasingly morally bankrupt, Sovereign Subjects sets a new rights agenda for Indigenous politics and Indigenous studies.

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.

Drawing on contemporary issues ranging from globalization and neoliberalism to the environment, this essential textbook - ideal for course use - encourages readers to question the limits of the law in its present state in order to develop fairer systems at the local, national, and global levels.

Chapter 1 Introduction -- chapter 2 New Cosmologies: Mapping the Postcolonial Feminist Legal Project -- chapter Liberal internationalism and the capabilities approach -- chapter 3 Erotic Disruptions: Legal Narratives of Culture, Sex and Nation in India -- chapter Narratives of culture, sex, nation -- chapter The Bandit Queen -- chapter Homosexuality -- chapter 4 The Tragedy of Victimisation Rhetoric: Resurrecting the 'Native' Subject in International/Postcolonial Feminist Legal Politics -- chapter Cultural essentialism -- chapter 'Death by culture' -- chapter 5 The Other Side of Universality: Cross-Border Movements and the Transnational Migrant Subject -- chapter Colonial subjects and the meaning of 'universality' -- chapter The Other in the contemporary moment -- chapter (b) Equating migration with trafficking.