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Law of Nations Theory and the Native Sovereignty Debates in Colonial India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 September 2019

Abstract

Beginning in the 1840s, high-ranking officials within the East India Company began a concerted effort to confiscate and annex princely states, citing misrule or a default of blood heirs. In response, metropolitan reformers and their Indian allies orchestrated a sustained legalistic defense of native sovereignty in the public sphere and emerged as vocal opponents of colonial expansionism. Adapting concepts put forth by both law of nations theorists and contemporary jurists, they sought to preserve longstanding treaties and defend the princes' exercise of internal sovereignty. The colonial government's failure to adequately define the basis of its modern “paramountcy” invited such creative maneuvering. Reformist opposition to the annexation of Awadh, the dispossession of the Nawab of the Carnatic, and the confiscation of Mysore demonstrates that international law did not simply function as a Eurocentric tool of subordination, but could also provide a bulwark against colonial depredations.

Type
Original Article
Copyright
Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 2019

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Footnotes

The author thanks Jennifer Pitts for her insightful feedback on earlier drafts of this article, the three anonymous reviewers for this journal, and the attendees at the “Struggling for Sovereignty: Reactions to Imperialism Across Asia” panel at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference (March, 2019).

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