Colonial Terror

Focusing on India between the early nineteenth century and the First World War, Colonial Terror explores the centrality of the torture of Indian bodies to the law-preserving violence of colonial rule—of some of the ways in which, in other words, extraordinary violence was embedded in the ordinary operation of colonial states. Although enacted largely by Indians on Indian bodies, particularly by subaltern members of the police, the book argues that torture was facilitated, systematized, and ultimately sanctioned by first the East India Company and then the Raj because it benefitted the colonial regime, since rendering the police a source of terror played a key role in the construction and maintenance of state sovereignty. Drawing upon the work of both Giorgio Agamben and Michel Foucault, Colonial Terror contends, furthermore, that it is only possible to understand the terrorizing nature of the colonial police in India by viewing colonial India as a ‘regime of exception’ in which two different forms, or levels, of exceptionality were in operation, one wrought through the exclusion of particular groups or segments of the Indian population from the law and the other by ‘petty sovereigns’ in their enactment of illegal violence in the operation of the law. It was in such fertile ground, in which colonial subjects were both included within the domain of colonial law while also being abandoned by it, that torture was able to flourish.

Re-Ordering the World from the Skies? The Emergence and Justification of Aerial Warfare

Thomas Hippler’s contribution focuses on the justifications of aerial bombing in the context of the inception of air warfare in the early twentieth century, especially, but not exclusively, in the realm of strategic thinking. The main purpose of the chapter is to point out the conceptions of international order behind the different justifications of aerial warfare and air strikes, in particular with regard to the strategic choice to target civil populations, which was first implemented through the concept of colonial ‘police bombing’ before being employed in strategic bombing campaigns. Hippler’s short genealogy of aerial bombings and their justifications interestingly reminds one of the local practices of declaring war and peace by early modern conquistadores (Arnulf Becker Lorca’s chapter) and nineteenth-century imperial agents (Lauren Benton’s chapter): as Thomas Hippler argues, with aerial warfare a new form of governance emerged, which (not least in its justification) points to a disturbing link to democracy.

Nacionalismo somali: Nação e propaganda política durante o regime militar

In 1969 Somalia, a country located in the Horn of Africa, suffered a military coup led by Siad Barre, a general who had integrated the colonial police of Somaliland and Italian Somalia. In this book we analyzed nine posters of governmental propaganda that comprise the period between 1974 -1975. The objective of this work is to discuss the construction of nationalism in the Barre Era, seeking similarities and discontinuities in relation to civil government. We use a vast historiography drawing to the maximum of local authors and theorists of the African continent. Through interdisciplinarity we aim to build a rich theoretical debate integrating anthropology, political science and history. The research used the theoretical model of historiographical analysis of Carlo Guinzburg, based on the investigation of clues in imagery sources. Elements of the local context, such as the process of decolonization of the Horn of Africa and conflicts with Ethiopia, have been emphasized, linking them to the global conjuncture of ideological conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union in the so-called Cold War. The impacts of colonialism are one of the central themes of the dissertation, so we try to demonstrate that events that occurred during colonization were fundamental to the complex puzzle that became the African continent during the 1960s and 1970s. Somalia does not escape this political panorama and the research tries to demonstrate that the posters analyzed were produced by the military government with the intention of disseminating a certain model of political regime.

The Geography of Vice

This chapter is a spatial analysis of Tonkin's black market sex industry. It investigates how the area's physical, administrative, economic, and political geography shaped the ways that unregistered sex was sold in Tonkin. Some of the areas discussed here include the Red River Delta, Hanoi, Hanoi's suburbs, Hai Phong City, the military bases, the border towns, and the coast of Tonkin. The chapter discusses how the geographic and political landscape of Tonkin enabled traffickers and clandestine sex workers to evade colonial police. It talks about how colonial land policies, the tax system, and the government's neglect of the suburbs further impoverished peasants, leading women to seek alternative income through sex work.

Property’s Guardians, People’s Terror

This article explores why victims of cattle theft in colonial north India avoided the police and courts, whose very purpose was to apprehend thieves and to restore stolen property. Throughout colonial rule, victims recovered stolen cattle themselves and with the help of khojis (trackers) and panchayat (indigenous systems). From the mid-nineteenth century onward, however, the British colonial government introduced criminal laws, like the Indian Penal Code and the Indian Evidence Act, and relied on colonial police to enforce those laws. These colonial laws and policing systems proved not only highly ineffective at dealing with theft, worsening the plight of victims while protecting thieves, but they also eroded the authority of indigenous institutions. By revisiting an important case, the Karnal Cattle Lifting Case (1913), the article shows how the institution of colonial police and courts oppressed rural Indian people and how and why Indian people, in turn, avoided colonial justice systems.

The chaukidari force: Watchmen, police and Dalits from the 1860s to the 1920s in United Provinces

Recruitment in the chaukidari forces under colonial police administration was an alternative to the colonial army for Dalits to get socio-political status, consciousness, ‘economic freedom’ (cash salary, rewards, lands and concessions), education and ‘civic equality’. Therefore, the chaukidari in the colonial police administration was a positive source of support for a section of Dalits, despite the limitation of numbers.

Domestic Imperialism

Frantz Fanon’s works have been invaluable in the analysis of colonies and the colonized subject’s mentality therein, but an analysis of the colonial power itself has been largely left to the wayside. The aim of this paper is to explicate a key element of Fanon’s theoretical framework, the metropolis/periphery dichotomy, then, using the writings of Huey P. Newton and Stokely Carmichael, among others, show its reversal within the colonial power. I will analyze this reversal in three ways: first, the reversal of the relationship between, and the roles of, the metropolis and periphery; second, the role of police and the differences between the colonial police and the police within the colonial power; and third, the modified role of prisons within the colonial power.

The Revolt of 1916 and its Influence on the Formation of Kazakh Nation Identity

The article explores the revolt of Kazakh people against the Russian colonial policy which took place during World War I in 1916. There are analyzed the main reasons of the revolt, amongst whichsocio-economic factors as well as political factors are determined. In spite of the fact that the revolt of 1916, which had taken the form of National Liberation Revolution, generally was defeated, it causedthe growth of national self-determination, the increase in political participation and also formed certain experience of independent Kazakh people’s state-building. The revolt swept almost the whole territory of modern Kazakhstan and took an unprecedented scale and cruelty within the Russian empire. In consequence, the significant losses were incurred and hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their homelands. These events are considered to be the direct consequence of the colonial police of the Russian Empire towards the subdue peoples.

Domestic Imperialism

Frantz Fanon’s works have been invaluable in the analysis of colonies and the colonized subject’s mentality therein, but an analysis of the colonial power itself has been largely left to the wayside. The aim of this paper is to explicate a key element of Fanon’s theoretical framework, the metropolis/periphery dichotomy, then, using the writings of Huey P. Newton and Stokely Carmichael, among others, show its reversal within the colonial power. I will analyze this reversal in three ways: first, the reversal of the relationship between, and the roles of, the metropolis and periphery; second, the role of police and the differences between the colonial police and the police within the colonial power; and third, the modified role of prisons within the colonial power.