Colonization, Criminalization and Complicity

Policing Gambling in Burma c 1880–1920

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8094516
AutoresJonathan Saha (0000-0001-8023-8294, autor de correspondencia)
Año2013
Volumen21
Número4
Páginas655-672
Fecha de publicación2013-12-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaSouth East Asia Research (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0967-828X • E-ISSN: 2043-6874
EditorialTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.5367/sear.2013.0174
OpenAlexW1811911666
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas5

As Professor Ian Brown's recent work on the colonial prison in British Burma has shown, the proportion of the population convicted of crimes was routinely and markedly higher than in any other province of British India. Part of the explanation for the exceptionally high figures may be the colonial criminalization of practices that were previously lawful. Gambling was one such activity that the British, at least according to their rhetoric, were intent on prohibiting as part of their ‘civilizing mission’. However, in practice colonial law was more ambiguous and equivocal. Government prosecutors and judges disputed the definition of gambling and struggled to differentiate it from other tolerated practices. Beyond these legal difficulties, individual British officials often found it necessary to turn a blind eye to gambling. On an everyday level, subordinate officials in the police and magistracy had an ambivalent relationship with gambling. Although empowered to suppress it, some chose to ignore its presence and others still were actively conniving with it. By studying how the British sought to control gambling in the colony at the turn of the twentieth century, this article seeks to restore the full complexity to the history of criminality in colonial Burma

Ambivalence · Colonialism · Complicity · Criminalization · Criminology · Government (linguistics · Political science · Population · Prison · Rhetoric · Sociology · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Asian Studies and History · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies