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1 - Forgetting War and Punishing Crime

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2024

Alastair McClure
Affiliation:
The University of Hong Kong
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Summary

Chapter Two explores the declaration of colonial peace through the amnesty offered to rebels in the Queen’s Proclamation of 1858. While this document has already piqued the interest of historians and political theorists of liberalism and “indirect rule,” I turn to this document as an instrument of post-conflict resolution. Comparing and contrasting the variety of strategies used by the state to temper forgiveness, this chapter tracks the creation of an uneven hierarchy of colonial subjecthood organized along lines of relative loyalty and disloyalty. In exploring the wider importance of amnesty at this juncture, this chapter examines this offer as a founding political bargain presented to the defeated. This promise of mercy, in this instance, had been contingent on the full surrender of Indian political agency.

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Chapter
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Trials of Sovereignty
Mercy, Violence, and the Making of Criminal Law in British India, 1857–1922
, pp. 32 - 68
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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