Trials of Sovereignty: Mercy, Violence, and the Making of Criminal Law in British India, 1857–1922

Legal History › Law

Trials of Sovereignty: Mercy, Violence, and the Making of Criminal Law in British India, 1857–1922

By Alastair McClure
Cambridge University Press November 2024

Specifications

ISBN-13
9781009553544
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Publication
November 2024
Format
Hardback
Jurisdiction
U.K. ? Countri(es) for reference only

Details

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.

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Forgetting War and Punishing Crime
2. The Peace: The Queen's Proclamation and the Politics of Forgiveness
3. The Code: Judges, Juries and Punishing Difference
4. Discretion, the Death Penalty, and the Criminal Trial
5. Pardons and Scaffolds
6. Tilak's Radical Innocence: Mercy, Sedition, and the State Trial
7. Gandhi's Guilt and the Return of War
Conclusion
Epilogue
Select Bibliography
Index
HKD 1,324.05 −3%
HKD 1,365.00

Inclusive of HK delivery

Ready to ship
Delivery Time: around 4-5 weeks
Extra 10 working days if shipping address outside Hong Kong
  • Free HK shipping over HK$1,000
  • International shipping to 35+ countries
Order Form
Save

Recommended

You may also be interested in these books:

More titles from Law

View all
Litigating Corporate Surveillance: Privacy, Autonomy, Power, and Democracy in the Courtroom
Routledge

Litigating Corporate Surveillance: Privacy, Autonomy, Power, and Democracy in the Courtroom

David Rudolph
HKD 529.49
IDS Handbook: Transfer of Undertakings 2025
Sweet & Maxwell U.K.

IDS Handbook: Transfer of Undertakings 2025

IDS Employment Law Brief Team
HKD 4,167.12
Competition Law and Collusion in Public Procurement
Routledge

Competition Law and Collusion in Public Procurement

Penelope Giosa
HKD 1,954.55
Human Rights in Transition
Oxford University Press

Human Rights in Transition

Nehal Bhuta
HKD 1,134.90
Statutory Nuisance: Law and Practice 3rd ed
Oxford University Press

Statutory Nuisance: Law and Practice 3rd ed

Rosalind Malcolm; John Pointing
HKD 1,891.50
Justice for Denizens New
Routledge

Justice for Denizens

Johan Olsthoorn
HKD 1,954.55