Indian Petitioning and Colonial State-Formation in Eighteenth-Century Bengal
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3621136 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Robert Travers (Cornell University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 53 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 89-122 |
| Publication date | 2019-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Modern Asian Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0026-749X • E-ISSN: 1469-8099 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0026749x17000841 |
| OpenAlex | W2911265250 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 12 |
| References cited | 49 |
This article explores the role of Indian petitioning in the process of consolidating British power after the East India Company's military conquest of Bengal in the late eighteenth century. The presentation of written petitions (often termed'arziin Persian) was a pervasive form of state-subject interaction in early modern South Asia that carried over, in modified forms, into the colonial era. The article examines the varied uses of petitioning as a technology of colonial state-formation that worked to establish the East India Company's headquarters in Calcutta as the political capital of Bengal and the Company as a sovereign source of authority and justice. It also shows how petitioning became a site of anxiety for both colonial rulers and Indian subjects, as British officials struggled to respond to a mass of Indian 'complaints' and to satisfy the expectations and norms of justice expressed by petitioners. It suggests that British rulers tried to defuse the perceived political threat of Indian petitioning by redirecting petitioners into the newly regulated spaces of an emergent colonial judiciary
Ancient history · Archaeology · BENGAL · Capital (architecture · Colonialism · Constitution of India · Economic history · Economic Justice · Petitioner · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sovereignty · State (computer science · Supreme court · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · Law
The role of educational governance and socioeconomic structures in shaping revolutionary activities in East Bengal
Beastial Communications’
Britain's fiscal‐military state in the eighteenth century
Petitioning by clerks and the colonial state in late nineteenth-century Burma
A True Copy? Documents and the Production of Legality in the Bombay Inam Commission
Taking Notes or Precedents? Legal Practice in Colonial India
Introduction
Entrepreneurs in diplomacy
Imperial durabilities of debt
Between Rule and Prerogative
Know Your Rights
Reporting Security
Hobson Jobson
The Transition in Bengal, 1756–1775
Revolt, Testimony, Petition
Ideology and Empire in Eighteenth-Century India
The Black Hole of Empire
The Mughal Empire
A despotism of law
Moral Conduct and Authority
Brokering Empire
The Millennial Sovereign
Reflections on Religious Difference and Permissive Inclusion in Mughal Law
Original Persian Letters, and other Documents with Facsimiles
Politics of Patronage and Protest
Courtly Encounters
Exclusionary Empire
Ironies of Colonial Governance
Sex and the Family in Colonial India
Law and Colonial Cultures
The Company-State
Revolt, Testimony, Petition
Habeas Corpus
Do Justice, Do Justice, For That is Paradise”
Transitions and Translations
Exclusionary Empire
Speaking Historically
Bonds of Belonging
The Many Legalities of Early America
A Note on Lawyers in Muslim India
Rhetoric and Ritual in Colonial India
Making Claims
A Thousand Countries To Go To
Performance in a World of Paper
History as Self-Representation
The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya
Mahzar-namas in the Mughal and British Empires
| Unique citing works | 12 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2026 (7) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 11 |