1 00:00:00,210 --> 00:00:05,940 I will ask Nishank to begin his presentation. I would give everybody a warning. 2 00:00:05,940 --> 00:00:13,860 Five minutes before they are due to to wrap up, and we will have some discussion after each paper. 3 00:00:13,860 --> 00:00:20,430 If time remains at the end, we may have some general reflections or considerations upon the panellists. 4 00:00:20,430 --> 00:00:28,300 OK, Nishank, you have the floor. Hey, thank you so much. 5 00:00:28,300 --> 00:00:37,270 Let me begin by thanking the organisers for letting me present at this conference, which has so many exciting and stimulating papers. 6 00:00:37,270 --> 00:00:41,350 I could not have hoped for a better chance than Provincia Guha, 7 00:00:41,350 --> 00:00:52,450 who has blazed bites for so many of us to follow across various dreamscapes in the Bombay they took my paper today forms a part of my Ph.D. research. 8 00:00:52,450 --> 00:01:00,760 It is very much work in progress and I would welcome your comments and criticism on it as we go along. 9 00:01:00,760 --> 00:01:04,690 So as a lawyer by training, I have, in the words of Phoebe Thompson, 10 00:01:04,690 --> 00:01:14,260 parachuted into the 19th century and the world of the English East India Company, and I hope to use this opportunity to discuss my work. 11 00:01:14,260 --> 00:01:23,920 My research is situated in imperial and social legal history, with a focus on the institutional culture of the company, both at home and in India. 12 00:01:23,920 --> 00:01:33,700 In particular, I am concerned with how legal and bureaucratic structures mediated between engagements between incarnation and the company. 13 00:01:33,700 --> 00:01:36,040 The title of this paper, Government of India, 14 00:01:36,040 --> 00:01:45,130 is a phrase that in 1824 report by Commissioner William Chaplin used to describe the company government in Canada. 15 00:01:45,130 --> 00:01:50,320 He says that the companies government of India has kept readers in check. 16 00:01:50,320 --> 00:02:00,100 I argue that this is not merely a rhetorical notion, but although it is often hazy, it is in ways very oddly specific. 17 00:02:00,100 --> 00:02:05,950 I attempt to sketch some features of what this government order means by setting the 18 00:02:05,950 --> 00:02:11,410 capital punishment practises in the commissioner's territories in the Bombay Necronomicon, 19 00:02:11,410 --> 00:02:14,860 which I would refer to as the Commissioner Editors. 20 00:02:14,860 --> 00:02:21,460 Circulation and control feature in my paper, not only how they were deployed by British officials to balance subjects, 21 00:02:21,460 --> 00:02:31,500 and they ruled already in India, but also how these officers themselves were subject to imperial circulation and control through the operation of. 22 00:02:31,500 --> 00:02:40,110 Seeing the iteration of order as part of the legal system, rather than merely the manifestation of statecraft is something that saturates, 23 00:02:40,110 --> 00:02:49,930 the commissioner stated, sees not only as a local unit, but actually a form of government in the broader imperial right that the company inhabiting. 24 00:02:49,930 --> 00:02:56,180 And there are some references to violence and certain terms that they use in today's presentation may be problematic. 25 00:02:56,180 --> 00:03:04,430 I do sort of intend to use them because they are used in the archival choices and part of the project is really 26 00:03:04,430 --> 00:03:13,650 to look at how communities which have so far been ignored as legal actors exercised agency in the past. 27 00:03:13,650 --> 00:03:18,060 So this is the East India company headquarters played in the street. 28 00:03:18,060 --> 00:03:23,880 This is significant because today this is the site of the Lloyds Bank headquarters. 29 00:03:23,880 --> 00:03:33,150 Allied Bank recently announced that they do admit and apologise for their role in slavery across the Atlantic. 30 00:03:33,150 --> 00:03:39,480 And they are currently looking at archival material to explore these linkages further. 31 00:03:39,480 --> 00:03:50,720 This becomes significant in the context of a company in there because India is often looked at as Britain's second empire. 32 00:03:50,720 --> 00:03:54,860 The term the English East India Company can be a bit of a misnomer. 33 00:03:54,860 --> 00:04:01,850 A lot of the officials I referred to in my Scottish from the legal perspective, 34 00:04:01,850 --> 00:04:08,570 1813 is a crucial Indian because that is when the company loses its monopoly to trade with India. 35 00:04:08,570 --> 00:04:20,660 And since 1793, the British parliament has been increasingly interfering and scrutinising the role that the company plays to my 36 00:04:20,660 --> 00:04:27,350 legal history has frequently been involved in looking at top level administrative structures and how they work. 37 00:04:27,350 --> 00:04:31,310 My attempt is to build on these anti-imperialist scholarship, 38 00:04:31,310 --> 00:04:42,120 which looks at the functioning of officials close to the ground and how their ratings and their actions actually constituted a framework for long. 39 00:04:42,120 --> 00:04:48,960 Doing so helps to develop sort of care about subnational undercurrents and local dynamics. 40 00:04:48,960 --> 00:05:01,540 And I intend to do this for the communist entities. So very briefly, just a sort of overview of the company's hierarchy, 41 00:05:01,540 --> 00:05:07,840 the Board of Control is something that the British parliament set up to oversee the activities of the company. 42 00:05:07,840 --> 00:05:18,550 The commissioner is in office, established under the Governor-General initially and then later under the Bombay government from 1819 onwards. 43 00:05:18,550 --> 00:05:25,170 The collecting political agent is sort of the key focus for my presentation. 44 00:05:25,170 --> 00:05:27,840 Many of you will be familiar with Mount Stuart, 45 00:05:27,840 --> 00:05:39,420 and since he was the first commissioner and subsequently becomes the governor of Bombay and is thereafter sort 46 00:05:39,420 --> 00:05:51,070 of instrumental in authoring a report which bridges practises and East India company practises in the 1819. 47 00:05:51,070 --> 00:05:55,420 John Briggs, again, perhaps some of you are familiar with this version. 48 00:05:55,420 --> 00:06:00,220 He is the first connected and political agent in Standish later in his life. 49 00:06:00,220 --> 00:06:06,280 He is of great significance for these translations of works from question and somebody. 50 00:06:06,280 --> 00:06:13,270 So some of you did referred to Forrest as well in Spanish and also a memoir of Nunavut. 51 00:06:13,270 --> 00:06:22,930 Newish Briggs occupies many, many different offices and roles in English and then thereafter, later in India. 52 00:06:22,930 --> 00:06:25,450 Briggs is a character of continuing interest. 53 00:06:25,450 --> 00:06:33,910 I hope to work on a legal biography of John Briggs in the coming year, and I'd welcome any sort of comments from passionate, 54 00:06:33,910 --> 00:06:39,740 in-body scholars about this condition to the U.S. where it's located. 55 00:06:39,740 --> 00:06:47,290 Property would be approximately this region in company records referred to very often as a region 56 00:06:47,290 --> 00:06:56,680 which has disorder and confusion preceding the decade of the Anglo-American was a pre company. 57 00:06:56,680 --> 00:07:05,020 Scholarship demonstrates that this actually would not have been the case, necessarily, but this is how company records to describe it very often. 58 00:07:05,020 --> 00:07:12,970 It's important strategically and economically because it forms a link between Hindustan and the. 59 00:07:12,970 --> 00:07:21,640 There is also the Bombay Agra Road, which passes through Kennish in later in the 19th century. 60 00:07:21,640 --> 00:07:24,880 It has challenging power in climate politics. 61 00:07:24,880 --> 00:07:33,010 A lot of hilly regions, lots of forested areas and polities who are not always friendly towards the company. 62 00:07:33,010 --> 00:07:37,750 So while this may seem like a little bit of a political hodgepodge, 63 00:07:37,750 --> 00:07:44,440 as this sort of map of Canada is needed in the 18th century demonstrates, it is ringed by various subtleties. 64 00:07:44,440 --> 00:07:49,420 The whole goes backwards. That's India, Indonesia. 65 00:07:49,420 --> 00:08:01,930 There are also smaller units so that the states have naturally planned numerous health chiefs who occupy different regions in tarnish. 66 00:08:01,930 --> 00:08:12,370 That is, however, partly a legal structure, which is already well established within the presidency, down to be 18 or. 67 00:08:12,370 --> 00:08:21,130 Image is of Indian law officials in the Bombay presidency in the Bombay. 68 00:08:21,130 --> 00:08:28,510 This does not necessarily apply to the commissioners territories, and we'll talk about that in just a moment. 69 00:08:28,510 --> 00:08:37,930 But the top level that presents Hindu law, which has been in the lower level, represent Muslim. 70 00:08:37,930 --> 00:08:43,760 There is also a fairly well-established British legal system for Bombay. 71 00:08:43,760 --> 00:08:52,750 They shouldn't see which has jurisdiction over Europeans who live there and within the rest of the state. 72 00:08:52,750 --> 00:09:00,940 This has British qualified lawyers who act as judges in the limits of the Bombay presidency. 73 00:09:00,940 --> 00:09:07,030 Again, this is distinct from the commissioner stated within the commissioner's territory. 74 00:09:07,030 --> 00:09:16,570 There is this sort of political and judicial hierarchy as far as policing and legal functions are concerned. 75 00:09:16,570 --> 00:09:22,810 So the collective really is the linchpin of company government in the commissioner stated. 76 00:09:22,810 --> 00:09:34,690 The boxes in blue are British officials, the ones in green eyes, Indian officials or others who engage with the company in various capacities. 77 00:09:34,690 --> 00:09:41,680 The collector very often also has military integrity of them, are actually military officers, 78 00:09:41,680 --> 00:09:52,620 and they do conduct court martial that dictates that within jurisdictions which are not always very clear, we will try to do that in just a moment. 79 00:09:52,620 --> 00:10:01,920 From the twenty, there are criminal judges to the judges are appointed for the commissioners, David devotees who travel on circuit. 80 00:10:01,920 --> 00:10:04,590 Again, these are not legally trained individuals, 81 00:10:04,590 --> 00:10:13,590 but these are companies who will challenge who are supposed to relieve the collector of a lot of judicial burden. 82 00:10:13,590 --> 00:10:21,150 I also want to emphasise that the collector is very heavily dependent on his Indian charity stuff. 83 00:10:21,150 --> 00:10:29,460 So the Who's Your Country again staffed largely by Brahmins and other district level officials and 84 00:10:29,460 --> 00:10:35,130 village level officials without which really this system of company government would not have functioned? 85 00:10:35,130 --> 00:10:47,730 And there are limits as far as how much of the local headquarters actually influences things that happen elsewhere in the province of Cavendish. 86 00:10:47,730 --> 00:10:55,230 To the heart of this, as an eager historian is on the issue of jurisdiction. 87 00:10:55,230 --> 00:11:03,390 These are very hazy and often overlapping. Unlike other places across the imperial world and even somewhere in the presidency, 88 00:11:03,390 --> 00:11:09,270 thousands, a lot of these are not formally assigned through instrumental commissions. 89 00:11:09,270 --> 00:11:14,910 These are arrogated buys which flow from office, and these are very often ad hoc. 90 00:11:14,910 --> 00:11:19,290 There are no instruments of appointment unknown to the commission, which are issued. 91 00:11:19,290 --> 00:11:23,550 Ironically, the commissioner himself does not Typekit commission, 92 00:11:23,550 --> 00:11:31,260 but it is only alleged that insurance the writes to him and his private secretary to the governor general of India. 93 00:11:31,260 --> 00:11:40,230 And this becomes a problem later on. When and since then becomes government attention decisions under him for review. 94 00:11:40,230 --> 00:11:44,190 So there is an opinion which is charged from the advocate general of Bombay, 95 00:11:44,190 --> 00:11:52,980 who then is in British Oxford qualified lawyer, who then validates this system and then recommends a few safeguards. 96 00:11:52,980 --> 00:11:57,840 It also found that many of the collectors actually been sworn into office, 97 00:11:57,840 --> 00:12:03,660 so retrospectively they do get sworn in as justices of the peace and as magistrate. 98 00:12:03,660 --> 00:12:13,350 But as you can see, there is a lot of ad hoc ism and allocation, which is what is taking place in terms of how this nation works. 99 00:12:13,350 --> 00:12:18,420 Now there are multiple areas in which jurisdiction exercised and. 100 00:12:18,420 --> 00:12:29,520 As we said before, so most of these collectors in the commissioning stages of military officers, so they have the power to convene court martials. 101 00:12:29,520 --> 00:12:33,780 They don't always do that to a number of executions do take place in time. 102 00:12:33,780 --> 00:12:38,880 They shred believe there is no discernible legal fora, which is convened, 103 00:12:38,880 --> 00:12:50,080 and Briggs is involved in at least three and four 41, which oblige because he had been staged by a priority above him. 104 00:12:50,080 --> 00:12:57,570 Rebellion is a very sort of amorphous category which is used to to hold all of these things in 105 00:12:57,570 --> 00:13:04,650 and a number of civilians identified by military officers under the guise of being debated. 106 00:13:04,650 --> 00:13:10,470 There is a notion of martial law which is talked about, not necessarily always invoked. 107 00:13:10,470 --> 00:13:18,360 I'd like to refer you to any man's work on martial law and disorder that it occupies and how it's 108 00:13:18,360 --> 00:13:29,170 different from this very clear distinction between military and civilian in the U.K. at the same. 109 00:13:29,170 --> 00:13:36,850 Criminal jurisdiction is something really that forms a very large part of maybe, he said, at least in this aspect. 110 00:13:36,850 --> 00:13:46,510 So a lot of these deals with organised crime show the gangs or highway robbery that dealt with that a number of murder cases, 111 00:13:46,510 --> 00:13:55,300 political integration, but through raids and robberies, which may have taken place earlier, is now treated as crime. 112 00:13:55,300 --> 00:13:57,270 And again, I just got here as well. 113 00:13:57,270 --> 00:14:08,770 Bush looks at bill criminal activity attempted to be negotiating, which is understood differently by the company government FBI. 114 00:14:08,770 --> 00:14:21,230 Robinson's work is actually very, very interesting because he actually delves into a lot of the trial records around which to deal with this. 115 00:14:21,230 --> 00:14:25,520 I civil jurisdiction, I mean, again, not relevant initially for the death penalty, 116 00:14:25,520 --> 00:14:38,230 but only affects a very limited number of of people mostly illiterate landed this huge condition fact is notoriously lacking in this chaplain. 117 00:14:38,230 --> 00:14:44,270 That begs for this saying that the lack of civil litigation is possibly a sign of corruption, 118 00:14:44,270 --> 00:14:54,260 and he required to address that and said there is talk of political jurisdiction also, which has many boundaries with the judiciary. 119 00:14:54,260 --> 00:15:00,110 So a number of the chiefs of Central Asian countries and it is later realise that 120 00:15:00,110 --> 00:15:06,500 they've never been tried to ascend to and then diminish what they should do, 121 00:15:06,500 --> 00:15:16,550 which is an end. And about seventy two people die within a month of them reaching that, and it's literally never even tried. 122 00:15:16,550 --> 00:15:27,890 Five minutes left. Shut. So groups which have been noticed by the judicial consultations who are Hindus, includes many, many other communities as. 123 00:15:27,890 --> 00:15:37,020 Deals are classified under that. This sort of binary between Hindus and Muslims is interesting and important because there are no 124 00:15:37,020 --> 00:15:44,720 official who determine how this is what sort of religious practises are to be followed in sentencing. 125 00:15:44,720 --> 00:15:50,180 Women particularly are noted in the consultation because the question of whether 126 00:15:50,180 --> 00:15:54,350 women can be sentenced to death is something that keeps doing the rounds. 127 00:15:54,350 --> 00:15:57,620 The commissioner is keen that this be implemented, 128 00:15:57,620 --> 00:16:05,090 but he faces opposition from the Bombay government against a different system for British civilians and shortages. 129 00:16:05,090 --> 00:16:16,440 So contrary to that of enquiries about corruption, those around the death penalty face very little scrutiny and very little process. 130 00:16:16,440 --> 00:16:24,750 So this some teams to underscore from from what I looked at before is how these guys are vested and 131 00:16:24,750 --> 00:16:33,060 how these by have super racial ideology legible to authorities higher up in the company hierarchy. 132 00:16:33,060 --> 00:16:35,610 There are many instances of coercion, 133 00:16:35,610 --> 00:16:45,890 and this follows Socio-Economic and perhaps not very different from the criminal justice system, and it seems to exist today. 134 00:16:45,890 --> 00:16:50,990 There are numerous anxieties about religious law and norms of banishment again, 135 00:16:50,990 --> 00:16:59,930 while there are works of codification right there, work of digesting some of these laws into usable manuals. 136 00:16:59,930 --> 00:17:11,720 These very rarely get used and there is and heavy reliance on religious issues and very quickly talk about the case of Naik. 137 00:17:11,720 --> 00:17:18,140 He was a man who Briggs executed. He had hot claims. 138 00:17:18,140 --> 00:17:23,420 He claims that he was not fully compensated. 139 00:17:23,420 --> 00:17:32,660 That he has promised pensions but only got a part of them and raided company villages in protest when he's called to account for this. 140 00:17:32,660 --> 00:17:38,750 He attended the archive described as an incident later, and he justified his rage. 141 00:17:38,750 --> 00:17:51,200 So this is the content of his letter. So he makes this claim to write and says that you ask us not to plant every day. 142 00:17:51,200 --> 00:18:02,300 They don't really provide for us. Please read to the restaurant to eat and leave has to feed a man with leave and then grass is an admirable plan. 143 00:18:02,300 --> 00:18:09,890 Should there are disputes about whether or not he actually said and as he admits to this letter and rage, 144 00:18:09,890 --> 00:18:19,310 he's hanged on the direction of John Briggs and then not, and he notes that a deceiver with instructions from its instant to do this. 145 00:18:19,310 --> 00:18:24,380 And he should have executed somebody, 146 00:18:24,380 --> 00:18:29,960 either Bill Knight adopt different strategies you can and should make escape 147 00:18:29,960 --> 00:18:36,160 from countries to get a gun from John Malcolm and then return to condition 148 00:18:36,160 --> 00:18:48,260 and negotiate with Big Monday night before the execution has actually obtained an agreement and then to be negotiated later of his successor. 149 00:18:48,260 --> 00:18:57,440 Archibald Robertson actually does try him and then transport him to a bear named the consequences to John Briggs, 150 00:18:57,440 --> 00:19:01,670 as I guess you can imagine, are not very severe. 151 00:19:01,670 --> 00:19:14,930 So the directors do, almost with a half decade later, talk about his treatment of unique and scathing terms, but nothing really, really happens. 152 00:19:14,930 --> 00:19:22,970 Briggs is already moved away from carnage by the time this Dispatches enquiry finds no fault in his actions, 153 00:19:22,970 --> 00:19:28,710 and Elphinstone essentially endorses the system that he creates as commissioner. 154 00:19:28,710 --> 00:19:38,690 So, I mean, this is just an image, which is the symbolic sort of representation of the nib breaking at the end of a capital sentence. 155 00:19:38,690 --> 00:19:49,040 So while this will conclude, the show sort of flattens the relations between the likes and the company, 156 00:19:49,040 --> 00:19:57,980 it actually does tells a story of a much more complicated and intricate pattern of negotiation and dealings. 157 00:19:57,980 --> 00:20:02,000 So that is run out of time. 158 00:20:02,000 --> 00:20:12,460 Yes, absolutely. Can I decide if in fact it. 159 00:20:12,460 --> 00:20:18,130 And to that is absolutely concluding in seconds. 160 00:20:18,130 --> 00:20:24,970 So I contend that legal authority was unconstrained by actual insular to so in 161 00:20:24,970 --> 00:20:31,570 the attempt to continue without high institutions and not follow British law, 162 00:20:31,570 --> 00:20:37,780 the electors were not really bound by any external or legal precedent and essentially 163 00:20:37,780 --> 00:20:44,560 indulged in ad hoc proceedings which created the so-called government of order. 164 00:20:44,560 --> 00:20:46,186 Thank you.