Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis article explores the entwined history of early colonial urbanism and the articulation of legal subjectivity under East India Company rule in South India. More specifically, it looks at petitions from outcaste labouring groups to the Madras government in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Although early colonial petitions were unequivocally products of colonial rule, which derived their distinctive form and language from colonial law, a reading of the petition archive is one of the only ways to achieve a historical understanding of the city of Madras as it was experienced by its less privileged inhabitants. This article looks at the delineation of the communal selfhood of subaltern urban communities through petition narratives, arguing that the variety and innovativeness displayed by petition writers is testament both to the acceptance of colonial legality and to the agency of native subjects in negotiating with, and appropriating the language and rationale of, the colonial legal regime.

Making a decisive shift from the 'top down' approach, the chapters in this volume treat law as a process that entails constant exchange, conflict, and adjustment between the rulers and the governed. Contributors to the volume look at the ways in which colonized subjects shape the contours of legal spaces and demonstrate that the process of establishing a legal regime in colonial South Asia was marked by continuous negotiation and mutual exchange.