Abstract

The role of the roughly 600 Indian princely kingdoms in the transformation of the law of nations into international law during the 19th century is an overlooked episode of international legal history. The Indian princely states effected a gradual end of the Mughal and the Maratha confederacies while appropriating international legal language. The Privy Council—before and after 1858—sanctified within common law as the acts of state, both, the seizure of territories from Indian kings and the ossification of encumbrances attached to the annexed territories. After the Crown takeover of the East India Company in 1858, the British India Government carefully rebooted, even mimicked, the native polyandric relationship of the tribal chiefs, petty states and semi-sovereigns with the Mughal–Maratha complex using multi-normative legal texts. Put down in the British stationery as engagements, sunnuds and treaties, these colonial texts projected an imperially layered nature of the native sovereignty. I challenge the metropole's claims of a one-way export to the colonies of the assumed normative surpluses. I argue that the periphery while responding to a ‘jurisdictional imperialism' upended interational law's civilisation-giving thesis by exporting law to the metropole.

中文翻译：

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印度君主制国家与19世纪国际法的转变

摘要

在19世纪，大约600个印度王子王国在国际法向国际法的转变中所扮演的角色是国际法史上被忽视的一幕。印度诸侯邦在适当采用国际法律语言的同时，逐步废除了了莫卧儿和马拉地邦邦。枢密院在1858年之前和之后在普通法中都将圣灵定为国家行为，既是从印度国王手中夺取领土，又是在附属领土上附有产权负担。1858年王室接管东印度公司后，英属印度政府使用多规范性法律文本，谨慎地重新启动，甚至模仿了部落首领，小州和半主权国家与莫卧儿一马拉塔综合体之间的一手多妻关系。这些殖民地文本既有朝圣者又有条约，这预示着当地主权的神圣层次。我对大都会提出的向假定的规范性盈余的殖民地单向出口的主张提出质疑。我认为，外围国家在回应“帝国主义帝国主义”时，通过向大都市出口法律，颠覆了国际法的文明赋予论点。