Petition Town

Legal historians have described early modern empires as characterized by legal pluralism and, indeed, the ubiquitous invocation of custom in these petitions appears to reiterate that this was the case in the south Indian colonial port city of Madras. However, the investment in the rhetoric of custom by the state and its subjects was increasingly linked to a regime of paper and property where written evidence and the precedent were prioritized not merely in the colonial courts but also in indigenous forums of arbitration. Thus the permeation of these evidentiary norms in both colonial and “traditional” legal arenas was a phenomenon that can help interrogate the idea of pluralism as an appropriate scholarly lens in defining the legal terrain in places like Madras.

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