Colonial Justice in British India (White Violence and The Rule of Law)

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Description
Colonial Justice in British India describes and examines the lesser-known history of white violence in colonial India. By foregrounding crimes committed by a mostly forgotten cast of European characters - planters, paupers, soldiers, and sailors - Elizabeth Kolsky argues that violence was not an exceptional but an ordinary part of British rule in the subcontinent. Despite the pledge of equality, colonial legislation, and the practices of white judges, juries and police placed most Europeans above the law, literally allowing them to get away with murder. The failure to control these unruly whites revealed how the weight of race and the imperatives of command imbalanced the scales of colonial justice. In a powerful account of this period, Kolsky reveals a new perspective on the British empire in India, highlighting the disquieting violence that invariably accompanied imperial forms of power.
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Contents
Introduction
1   White peril: law and lawlessness in early colonial India
2   Citizens, subjects, and subjection to law: codification and the legal construction
     of racial difference
3   "Indian human nature": evidence, experts, and the elusive pursuit of truth
4   "One scale of justice for the planter and another for the coolie": law and violence on
      the Assam tea plantations
5    "A judicial scandal": the imperial conscience and the race against empire
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
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Author Details
Elizabeth Kolsky is an assistant professor of History at Villanova University. She is co-editor of Fringes of empire: People, Power and Places on the Margins of Colonial India (2009), author of many articles, and contributor to numerous books.
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