Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- 1 Imperial Miasma
- 2 Theory and the Construction of Unequal Colonial Identities
- 3 Imagery and Law in the Creation of Identities
- 4 Scientific Racism and the Constitution of Difference
- 5 The ‘Ethnic’ as a Component of the ‘Criminal’ Class
- 6 Imposing Colonial Legal Identities in India
- 7 Constructing the Sansi as a ‘Criminal’ Class
- 8 Imperial Reflections: A Compelling Insistence
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
1 - Imperial Miasma
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- 1 Imperial Miasma
- 2 Theory and the Construction of Unequal Colonial Identities
- 3 Imagery and Law in the Creation of Identities
- 4 Scientific Racism and the Constitution of Difference
- 5 The ‘Ethnic’ as a Component of the ‘Criminal’ Class
- 6 Imposing Colonial Legal Identities in India
- 7 Constructing the Sansi as a ‘Criminal’ Class
- 8 Imperial Reflections: A Compelling Insistence
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
Man is human only to the extent to which he tries to impose his existence on another man in order to be recognized by him. As long as he has not been effectively recognized by the other, that other will remain the theme of his actions. It is on that other being, on recognition by that other being, that his own human worth and reality depend. It is in that other being in whom the meaning of his life is condensed.
Introduction: From Fragments to an Empire
The literature on the relationship between Victorian England and imperial India is growing with a welcome contribution from Subaltern Study scholars. The latter increasingly emphasize the dynamics, the bilateral relationship between the two societies. Previous assumptions of the passive role of indigenous peoples in those processes have been overturned by varied empirical studies. Scholars are increasingly turning their gaze to questions of empire, colonialism and post-colonialism, in order to provide an understanding of imperialism, and to the dynamics of imperialist technologies to the colonial project. This book adds to that body of literature by examining the intimate relationship between law and imperialism, in which two case studies of legal similarity and difference, are offered here.
In Law and Imperialism, we consider the marked reduction of the legal status of the non-Western, by examining the active contribution of both the colonials and the colonizers, to changes at the imperial centre. The growth of Empire was not a one-way process in which British agencies constructed Indian society in their own image. Rarely has there been serious discussion about the role of India itself, which made its own significant impact on British structures, culture, discourses and behaviours, than a previous generation of historians acknowledged.
The trigger for the development of such a historical view has not been a sudden revelation, a paradigmatic breakthrough, but the accumulation of apparently significant insights.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Law and ImperialismCriminality and Constitution in Colonial India and Victorian England, pp. 1 - 16Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014