The Customs of Conquest: Legal Primitivism and British Paramountcy in Northeast India

2021 ◽  
pp. 025764302110421
Author(s):  
Sanghamitra Misra
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Northeast India ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Political Autonomy ◽  
Hill Tribe ◽  
The Government ◽  
Garo Hills ◽  
The Hill

The discourse around indigeneity, customary rights of possession and claims to political autonomy in Northeast India conventionally traces the postcolonial protectionist legislation for ‘tribes’ to various acts passed under the late colonial state, the most significant precursor being seen as the Government of India Act, 1935. This article will argue that one can in fact trace the ‘original moment’ in the idea of customary law for ‘tribes’ much further back in history, to the early decades of the nineteenth century. This historical moment was anchored in the beginnings of the East India Company’s conquest of the Garo hills in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, in the appropriation of the land and revenue of the Garos and in the ethnogenesis of the ‘hill Garo’. The article will explore the ways in which the beginning of the invention of customary law and traditional authority in Northeast India under East India Company rule was impelled by the Company’s demands for revenue and was shielded and secured by the deployment of military power across the hills. Over the course of the nineteenth century, the strategies of imperial control first introduced in the region were reproduced across the rest of Northeast India, underscoring the significance of the Garo hills as the first ‘laboratory’ of colonial rule in the region as well as sharpening our understanding of the character of the early colonial state. The article thus takes as its task the historicization of the categories of ‘customary law’, ‘traditional/indigenous authority’ and the ‘hill tribe’, all of which form the basis of late colonial and postcolonial legislation on the ‘tribe’.

scholarly journals Mass Petitioning, Education Reform, and the Development of Political Culture in Madras, 1839–1842

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Scott Travanion Connors
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Education Reform ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
The Creation

Abstract This article explores the emergence of reformist sentiment and political culture in Madras in the mid-nineteenth century. Moreover, it contributes to, and expands upon, the growing body of literature on colonial petitioning through a case-study of a mass petition demanding education reform. Signed in 1839 by 70,000 subjects from across the Madras presidency, the petition demanded the creation of a university that would qualify western-educated Indians to gain employment in the high public offices of the East India Company. Through an analysis of the lifecycle of this education petition, from its creation to its reception and the subsequent adoption of its demands by the Company government at Fort St George, this article charts the process by which an emergent, politicized public engaged with, and critiqued, the colonial state. Finally, it examines the transformative effect that the practice of mass petitioning had on established modes of political activism and communication between an authoritarian colonial state and the society it governed.

Colonialism and Its Unruly?—The Colonial State and Kuki Raids in Nineteenth Century Northeast India

2013 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 1188-1232 ◽  
Author(s):  
JANGKHOMANG GUITE
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
World Order ◽  
Northeast India ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
State Appropriations ◽  
Independent State ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Hill Tribes ◽  
Hunting Ground

AbstractThis paper examines the colonial representation of tribal raids in the Northeast frontier of India and argues that, rather than being the ‘lawless and predatory habits of the savage hill tribes’, it was an expression of hill politics. The Kukis raided British territory when they discovered that an extension of the colonial boundary threatened their very existence as an independent state-evading population. It traces how the Kukis re-ethnicized themselves in the hills by evolving a system that is state-repellent, protected by a vast strip of forested jungle around their settlements commonly known as the ‘hunting ground’. It locates the ‘raid’ in the context of the difference in the perception of space and territoriality between the colonial state and indigenous polities. Colonial spatial ideology and its hill-valley binary are seen to play a vital role in animating tension on the frontier. The raid is thus understood as the ultimate weapon of resistance against an established state by an independent ‘not-a-state-subject’ people in defence of their autonomy and essentially represents non-state practices against state appropriations. Instead of being ‘unruly’, the raid is seen as a form of organized and premeditated resistance based on the consciousness of the hillmen's lived world order.

scholarly journals Nineteenth-Century Eurasians and Spatiality in Emma Roberts’ Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan, with Sketches of Anglo-Indian Society (1835)

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Divya A ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Third Space ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Spatial Politics ◽  
Spatial Homogeneity ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
East Indian ◽  
Homi Bhabha ◽  
The Government

In this article, through a spatial reading of Roberts’ Scenes and Characteristics I illustrate how the stringent regulations of the East Indian Company disempowering the Eurasians are manifested through the spatial strictures, and how notions of cultural purity and hierarchy are realized through the politics of space in colonial India. Spatial concepts of lived space, third space, and hybridity— drawn from the theories of Homi Bhabha, Edward Soja and Henry Lefebvre—are useful in mapping the spatial politics in nineteenth-century India, especially in relation to the Government-house in Calcutta, the seat of the highest authority in colonial India, and the marginalized orphanages/schools run by the East India Company primarily for the benefit of Eurasian children. Discrimination through spatially segregation was practiced by the British East India Company in order to preserve the racial purity of the European upper class at the helm of the Indian colony. My paper illustrates how the fortunes of the male and female “half-castes” of empire were variously charted, and how spatial homogeneity was subverted through the subtext of marital relations. The “third space” that some of the fortunately-marked interracial men and women occupy constantly pulled at the seams of apparently inviolable concepts of homogeneity and purity to expose and challenge the cultural dominion of the British Empire.

The Formation of the Concept of Nation-State in Nepal

1984 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Burghart
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Modern Concept ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Political Autonomy ◽  
Ganges Basin ◽  
The Ganges

At the turn of the nineteenth century three different indigenous concepts were central to the Nepalese understanding of their polity. These were the possessions (muluk) of the king, the realm (deśa), and the countries (also deśa or des) of a people. Each of these concepts specified a different relationship between ruler, land, and people, and each was legitimated with reference to a different kind of authority: proprietary, ritual, or ancestral. When the East India Company gained politicoeconomic control of the Ganges basin, the Nepalese found that they had to accommodate themselves to a powerful neighbor with alien views on the structure and boundary of the polity. In order to preserve its political autonomy on the subcontinent, the Nepalese government began to reconceive the nature of its polity from a foreign point of view. This article considers reinterpretations by the Nepalese government over a period of one hundred and fifty years of the concepts of possessions, realm, and country in order to form the modern concept of the nation-state.

An Ethnographer’s Journey through Land Grab for Capitalists by the Left Front Government in West Bengal

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abhijit Guha
Keyword(s):  
Social Economy ◽  
Northeast India ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Community Resources ◽  
Land Grab ◽  
Positive Law ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Constitutional Protections ◽  
Land Question ◽  
The Hill

Chakraborty and Ray discuss the ‘land question’ by critically examining the appropriation of community land and subsequent dispossession of the tribes embedded in the social economy of the hills of Northeast India. They state that the historico-epistemological hiatus between the customary law abiding tribes vis-à-vis the positive law imposing state appears to be fundamental in understanding the difference between the two contrasting interpretations of property rights enacted in the highlands of the region. The trivialization of community land and dispossession of the tribal masses in Manipur, Meghalaya, and Tripura suggests that constitutional protections have fallen short in protecting the community resources of the tribes. The hydropower projects in Arunachal Pradesh and the threats of dispossession of the communities under the hegemony of state-business collusion represent the continuing process of appropriation of the community resources in the hill areas.

Some aspects of the idea of unity V. Solovyov and the present

2000 ◽  
pp. 20-25
Author(s):  
O. O. Romanovsky
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
National Policy ◽  
The State ◽  
Place Of Residence ◽  
The Government ◽  
The University ◽  
Temporary Closure

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the nature of the national policy of Russia is significantly changing. After the events of 1863 in Poland (the Second Polish uprising), the government of Alexander II gradually abandoned the dominant idea of ​​anathematizing, whose essence is expressed in the domination of the principle of serving the state, the greatness of the empire. The tsar-reformer deliberately changes the policy of etatamism into the policy of state ethnocentrism. The manifestation of such a change is a ban on teaching in Polish (1869) and the temporary closure of the University of Warsaw. At the end of the 60s, the state's policy towards a five million Russian Jewry was radically revised. The process of abolition of restrictions on travel, education, place of residence initiated by Nicholas I, was provided reverse.

THE IDEA OF «COMMUNITY» IN THE GOVERNMENT CONCEPTS OF GALICIA OF THE XIX – BEGINNING OF THE XX CENTURY

2019 ◽  
pp. 15-21
Author(s):  
Liubomyr Ilyn
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Practical Significance ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Legal Principle ◽  
General Scientific ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Right ◽  
The 19Th Century

Purpose. The purpose of the article is to analyze and systematize the views of social and political thinkers of Galicia in the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries. on the right and manner of organizing a nation-state as a cathedral. Method. The methodology includes a set of general scientific, special legal, special historical and philosophical methods of scientific knowledge, as well as the principles of objectivity, historicism, systematic and comprehensive. The problem-chronological approach made it possible to identify the main stages of the evolution of the content of the idea of catholicity in Galicia's legal thought of the 19th century. Results. It is established that the idea of catholicity, which was borrowed from church terminology, during the nineteenth century. acquired clear legal and philosophical features that turned it into an effective principle of achieving state unity and integrity. For the Ukrainian statesmen of the 19th century. the idea of catholicity became fundamental in view of the separation of Ukrainians between the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires. The idea of unity of Ukrainians of Galicia and the Dnieper region, formulated for the first time by the members of the Russian Trinity, underwent a long evolution and received theoretical reflection in the work of Bachynsky's «Ukraine irredenta». It is established that catholicity should be understood as a legal principle, according to which decisions are made in dialogue, by consensus, and thus able to satisfy the absolute majority of citizens of the state. For Galician Ukrainians, the principle of unity in the nineteenth century. implemented through the prism of «state» and «international» approaches. Scientific novelty. The main stages of formation and development of the idea of catholicity in the views of social and political figures of Halychyna of the XIX – beginning of the XX centuries are highlighted in the work. and highlighting the distinctive features of «national statehood» that they promoted and understood as possible in the process of unification of Ukrainian lands into one state. Practical significance. The results of the study can be used in further historical and legal studies, preparation of special courses.

Capital californiano, necesidad presupuestal y cambio político: Juan Temple y el arrendamiento de la Casa de Moneda de México, 1827–1857

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 327-351
Author(s):  
Omar Velasco Herrera
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
The Political ◽  
Las Casas ◽  
Siglo Xix ◽  
The Government

Durante la primera mitad del siglo xix, las necesidades presupuestales del erario mexicano obligaron al gobierno a recurrir al endeudamiento y al arrendamiento de algunas de las casas de moneda más importantes del país. Este artículo examina las condiciones políticas y económicas que hicieron posible el relevo del capital británico por el estadounidense—en estricto sentido, californiano—como arrendatario de la Casa de Moneda de México en 1857. Asimismo, explora el desarrollo empresarial de Juan Temple para explicar la coyuntura política que hizo posible su llegada, y la de sus descendientes, a la administración de la ceca de la capital mexicana. During the first half of the nineteenth century, the budgetary needs of the Mexican treasury forced the government to resort to borrowing and leasing some of the most important mints in the country. This article examines the political and economic conditions that allowed for the replacement of British capital by United States capital—specifically, Californian—as the lessee of the Mexican National Mint in 1857. It also explores the development of Juan Temple’s entrepreneurship to explain the political circumstances that facilitated his admission, and that of his descendants, into the administration of the National Mint in Mexico City.

Delhi in Transition, 1821 and Beyond

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
English Translation ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Original Manuscript ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
The Times ◽  
First Time ◽  
The City

Commissioned by the English East India Company to write about contemporary nineteenth-century Delhi, Mirza Sangin Beg walked around the city to capture its highly fascinating urban and suburban extravaganza. Laced with epigraphy and fascinating anecdotes, the city as ‘lived experience’ has an overwhelming presence in his work, Sair-ul Manazil. Sair-ul Manazil dominates the historiography of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century compositions on Delhi in Persian and Urdu, and remains unparalleled in its architecture and detailed content. It deals with the habitations of people, bazars, professions and professionals, places of worship and revelry, and issues of contestation. Over fifty typologies of structures and several institutions that find resonance in the Persian and Ottoman Empires can also be gleaned from Sair-ul Manazil. Interestingly, Beg made no attempt to ‘monumentalize’ buildings; instead, he explored them as spaces reflective of the sociocultural milieu of the times. Delhi in Transition is the first comprehensive English translation of Beg’s work, which was originally published in Persian. It is the only translation to compare the four known versions of Sair-ul Manazil, including the original manuscript located in Berlin, which is being consulted for the first time. It has an exhaustive introduction and extensive notes, along with the use of varied styles in the book to indicate the multiple sources of the text, contextualize Beg’s work for the reader and engage him with the debate concerning the different variants of this unique and eclectic work.

The Novel in English in Malaya and Singapore to 1950

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamara Wagner
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
East Asia ◽  
English Language ◽  
Joseph Conrad ◽  
Civil Servant ◽  
Civil Servants ◽  
East India Company ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
The Novel ◽  
English East India Company

This chapter looks at the representations of the former British Straits Settlements in English fiction from 1819 to 1950, discussing both British literary works that are located in South East Asia and English-language novels from Singapore and Malaysia. Although over the centuries, Europeans of various nationalities had located, intermarried, and established unique cultures throughout the region, writing in the English language at first remained confined to travel accounts, histories, and some largely anecdotal fiction, mostly by civil servants. English East India Company employees wrote about the region, often weaving anecdotal sketches into their historical, geographical, and cultural descriptions. Civil servant Hugh Clifford and Joseph Conrad are the two most prominent writers of fiction set in the British Straits Settlements during the nineteenth century; they also epitomize two opposing camps in representing the region.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document