We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
The Making and Remaking of a Colonial Judicial State (c.1780–1793)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 September 2022
This concluding chapter considers the reforms of Governor-general Charles, Lord Cornwallis (1786-93) as the culmination of a decades-long process of imperial co-option, whereby British authorities had gradually expropriated and recast a late Mughal, Persianate system of taxation and justice. Cornwallis’s famous minute on civil justice from 1793 proclaimed itself as a great leap forward in its assertion of ‘British’ justice, making all civil disputes over land and taxation cognizable in separate law courts. Yet Cornwallis, like earlier British reformers, while he railed against the supposedly despotic practices of earlier Indian rulers, was also intensely aware of the multitudes of Indian petitioners and agents (wakils) crowding the Company’s ‘adalats and making legal claims on the Company. His minute on civil justice therefore did not simply announce the arrival of a new rule of law, but envisioned it as a crucial engine of colonial pedagogy, which would eventually turn clamorous and unruly Indian litigants into law-abiding subjects.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
