Sovereignty, International Law, and the Princely States of Colonial South Asia
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ISBN:
9780198907602
Publication date:
25/10/2023
Hardback
272 pages
We sell our titles through other companies
Disclaimer :You will be redirected to a third party website.The sole responsibility of supplies, condition of the product, availability of stock, date of delivery, mode of payment will be as promised by the said third party only. Prices and specifications may vary from the OUP India site.
ISBN:
9780198907602
Publication date:
25/10/2023
Hardback
272 pages
Priyasha Saksena
What constitutes a sovereign state in the international legal sphere? This question has been central to international law for centuries. Sovereignty, International Law, and the Princely States of Colonial South Asia provides a compelling exploration of the history of sovereignty through an analysis of the jurisdictional politics involving a specific set of historical legal entities.
Rights: SOUTH ASIA RIGHTS (RESTRICTED)
Priyasha Saksena
Description
What constitutes a sovereign state in the international legal sphere? This question has been central to international law for centuries. Sovereignty, International Law, and the Princely States of Colonial South Asia provides a compelling exploration of the history of sovereignty through an analysis of the jurisdictional politics involving a specific set of historical legal entities.
Governed by local rulers, the princely states of colonial South Asia were subject to British paramountcy whilst remaining legally distinct from directly ruled British India. Their legal status and the extent of their rights remained the subject of feverish debates through the entirety of British colonial rule. This book traces the ways in which the language of sovereignty shaped the discourse surrounding the legal status of the princely states to illustrate how the doctrine of sovereignty came to structure political imagination in colonial South Asia and the framework of the modern Indian state.
Opening with a survey of the place of the princely states in the colonial structures of South Asia, Sovereignty, International Law, and the Princely States of Colonial South Asia goes on to illustrate how international lawyers, British politicians, colonial officials, rulers and bureaucrats of princely states, and anti-colonial nationalists in British India used definitions of sovereignty to construct political orders in line with their interests and aspirations. By invoking the vernacular of sovereignty in contrasting ways to support their differing visions of imperial and world order, these actors also attempted to reconfigure the boundaries among the spheres of the national, the imperial, and the international. Throughout the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, debates and disputes over the princely states continually defined and redefined the concept of sovereignty and international legitimacy in South Asia.
Using rich material from the colonial archives,Sovereignty, International Law, and the Princely States of Colonial South Asia conveys an understanding of the history of sovereignty and the construction of the modern Indian nation-state that is still relevant today. A riveting read, this book will be of considerable interest and importance to scholars of international law and South Asia, legal historians, and political scientists.
About the author:
Priyasha Saksena is a lecturer at the School of Law, University of Leeds, UK. Her research focuses on the historical development of legal concepts and institutions within the British empire and their contemporary effects. She is particularly interested in exploring how legal doctrines such as sovereignty have shaped the relationship between international law and colonialism.
Priyasha Saksena
Table of contents
1:Introduction
2:Setting the Stage: The Legal Construction of British Paramountcy
3:Jousting Over Jurisdiction: Sovereignty Debates in the Aftermath of the 1857 Rebellion
4:The Controversy Over Divisible Sovereignty: The Princes and the Indian States Committee
5:Political Negotiations: The Princes in the Federation Debates
6:Building the Nation: The Princely States in the Age of Decolonization
7:Epilogue
Priyasha Saksena
Priyasha Saksena
Review
"In recent decades, the histories of South Asian and international law have become booming fields within legal history. This book offers an intriguing answer to the question of what connects them by taking us back to the colonial era and the princely states of South Asia. Priyasha Saksena illuminates a world that only flickered at the edges of colonial legal histories before, leading us from extradition and railway disputes to decolonization debates. The princely states are gone, but thanks to this brilliant study, no longer forgotten in legal history! A must-read on sovereignty and the quest to internationalize conflict." - Mitra Sharafi, University of Wisconsin Law School
"This fascinating study deepens our understanding of the effects of jurisdictional politics in Indian princely states on imperial order and international law. Saksena deftly balances attention to South Asian legal actors, British officials, and international lawyers as they invoked multiple meanings of sovereignty well into the twentieth century. A valuable addition to the literature on legal imagination, empires, and states." - Lauren Benton, Yale University
"This is a superb book, in which Priyasha Saksena expertly examines the princely states in colonial South Asia, as well as just after decolonization, and thereby provides a wealth of insight about the history of international law. Most notably, she illustrates how various actors - the princes themselves, their bureaucrats, British officials, and later nationalists - manipulated the legal complexity surrounding ever-changing notions of sovereignty, to try to achieve their various political ends. This is my favourite kind of history - clever, counterintuitive, and clear all at the same time." - Edward J. Kolla, Georgetown University in Qatar
"Priyasha Saksena presents a compelling history of international law, sovereignty and global imperialism examined through the prism of the Indian princely states. In this elegantly written book, Saksena critiques a series of vivid case studies, bringing alive the complex and fraught relationships between Indian rulers, international lawyers, colonial administrators and anticolonial nationalists in conceiving multiple, and often competing, definitions of sovereignty. Examining a rich treasure trove of materials she canvases broadly the colonial era from eighteenth century East India Company rule to Indian Independence and decolonization in the 1940s. Saksena is a gifted historian at the forefront of a new generation of scholars reestablishing the much understudied history of the Indian princely states, and this book is essential reading for anyone interested in emergent debates on colonial Indian political and legal history." - Angma D. Jhala, Bentley University
Description
What constitutes a sovereign state in the international legal sphere? This question has been central to international law for centuries. Sovereignty, International Law, and the Princely States of Colonial South Asia provides a compelling exploration of the history of sovereignty through an analysis of the jurisdictional politics involving a specific set of historical legal entities.
Governed by local rulers, the princely states of colonial South Asia were subject to British paramountcy whilst remaining legally distinct from directly ruled British India. Their legal status and the extent of their rights remained the subject of feverish debates through the entirety of British colonial rule. This book traces the ways in which the language of sovereignty shaped the discourse surrounding the legal status of the princely states to illustrate how the doctrine of sovereignty came to structure political imagination in colonial South Asia and the framework of the modern Indian state.
Opening with a survey of the place of the princely states in the colonial structures of South Asia, Sovereignty, International Law, and the Princely States of Colonial South Asia goes on to illustrate how international lawyers, British politicians, colonial officials, rulers and bureaucrats of princely states, and anti-colonial nationalists in British India used definitions of sovereignty to construct political orders in line with their interests and aspirations. By invoking the vernacular of sovereignty in contrasting ways to support their differing visions of imperial and world order, these actors also attempted to reconfigure the boundaries among the spheres of the national, the imperial, and the international. Throughout the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, debates and disputes over the princely states continually defined and redefined the concept of sovereignty and international legitimacy in South Asia.
Using rich material from the colonial archives,Sovereignty, International Law, and the Princely States of Colonial South Asia conveys an understanding of the history of sovereignty and the construction of the modern Indian nation-state that is still relevant today. A riveting read, this book will be of considerable interest and importance to scholars of international law and South Asia, legal historians, and political scientists.
About the author:
Priyasha Saksena is a lecturer at the School of Law, University of Leeds, UK. Her research focuses on the historical development of legal concepts and institutions within the British empire and their contemporary effects. She is particularly interested in exploring how legal doctrines such as sovereignty have shaped the relationship between international law and colonialism.
Read MoreReviews
"In recent decades, the histories of South Asian and international law have become booming fields within legal history. This book offers an intriguing answer to the question of what connects them by taking us back to the colonial era and the princely states of South Asia. Priyasha Saksena illuminates a world that only flickered at the edges of colonial legal histories before, leading us from extradition and railway disputes to decolonization debates. The princely states are gone, but thanks to this brilliant study, no longer forgotten in legal history! A must-read on sovereignty and the quest to internationalize conflict." - Mitra Sharafi, University of Wisconsin Law School
"This fascinating study deepens our understanding of the effects of jurisdictional politics in Indian princely states on imperial order and international law. Saksena deftly balances attention to South Asian legal actors, British officials, and international lawyers as they invoked multiple meanings of sovereignty well into the twentieth century. A valuable addition to the literature on legal imagination, empires, and states." - Lauren Benton, Yale University
"This is a superb book, in which Priyasha Saksena expertly examines the princely states in colonial South Asia, as well as just after decolonization, and thereby provides a wealth of insight about the history of international law. Most notably, she illustrates how various actors - the princes themselves, their bureaucrats, British officials, and later nationalists - manipulated the legal complexity surrounding ever-changing notions of sovereignty, to try to achieve their various political ends. This is my favourite kind of history - clever, counterintuitive, and clear all at the same time." - Edward J. Kolla, Georgetown University in Qatar
"Priyasha Saksena presents a compelling history of international law, sovereignty and global imperialism examined through the prism of the Indian princely states. In this elegantly written book, Saksena critiques a series of vivid case studies, bringing alive the complex and fraught relationships between Indian rulers, international lawyers, colonial administrators and anticolonial nationalists in conceiving multiple, and often competing, definitions of sovereignty. Examining a rich treasure trove of materials she canvases broadly the colonial era from eighteenth century East India Company rule to Indian Independence and decolonization in the 1940s. Saksena is a gifted historian at the forefront of a new generation of scholars reestablishing the much understudied history of the Indian princely states, and this book is essential reading for anyone interested in emergent debates on colonial Indian political and legal history." - Angma D. Jhala, Bentley University
Table of contents
1:Introduction
2:Setting the Stage: The Legal Construction of British Paramountcy
3:Jousting Over Jurisdiction: Sovereignty Debates in the Aftermath of the 1857 Rebellion
4:The Controversy Over Divisible Sovereignty: The Princes and the Indian States Committee
5:Political Negotiations: The Princes in the Federation Debates
6:Building the Nation: The Princely States in the Age of Decolonization
7:Epilogue
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