Trials of Sovereignty - Mercy, Violence, and the Making of Criminal Law in British India, 1857–1922

Trials of Sovereignty offers the first legal history of mercy and discretion in nineteenth and twentieth-century India. Through a study of large-scale amnesties, the prerogative powers of pardon, executive commutation, and judicial sentencing practices, Alastair McClure argues that discretion represented a vital facet of colonial rule. In a bloody penal order, officials and judges consistently offered reduced sentences and pardons for select subjects, encouraging others to approach state institutions and confer the colonial state with greater legitimacy. Mercy was always a contested expression of sovereign power that risked exposing colonial weakness. This vulnerability was gradually recognized by colonial subjects who deployed a range of legal and political strategies to interrogate state power and question the lofty promises of British colonial justice. By the early twentieth century, the decision to break the law and reject imperial overtures of mercy had developed into a crucial expression of anticolonial politics.

List of contents

List of Figures and Tables; Acknowledgements; List of Abbreviations; Introduction; 1. Forgetting War and Punishing Crime; 2. The Peace: The Queen's Proclamation and the Politics of Forgiveness; 3. The Code: Judges, Juries and Punishing Difference; 4. Discretion, the Death Penalty, and the Criminal Trial; 5. Pardons and Scaffolds; 6. Tilak's Radical Innocence: Mercy, Sedition, and the State Trial; 7. Gandhi's Guilt and the Return of War; Conclusion; Epilogue; Select Bibliography; Index.

About the author

Alastair McClure is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Hong Kong. His research has appeared in History Workshop Journal, Law and History Review, and Modern Asian Studies.

Product details

• Authors: Alastair McClure
• Publisher: Cambridge Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 31.03.2026
• EAN: 9781009553513
• ISBN: 978-1-009-55351-3
• Illustrations: Worked examples or Exercises
• Series: Studies in Legal History
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Geosciences > Geography; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Criminology, 20th Century, LAW / Legal History, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Regional Studies, 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000, India, c 1800 to c 1900, Colonialism & imperialism, Later 19th century c 1850 to c 1899, Regional Studies, Legal History, Early 20th century c 1900 to c 1950, Colonialism and imperialism, Regional / International studies, Crime and criminology, Crime & criminology