Based on original sources, this volume is a pioneering work in the study of the growth and development of judicial administration in Assam since the beginning of the East India Company’s rule in the province till it was separated from the Bengal Presidency in 1874. In view of the fact that Assam had its own laws and codes different from those of other provinces of British India, this work is unique and pioneering in its reach. Assam was administered under non-regulation system which had its origin in the neighbouring province of Bengal and was governed by a mixed system of local and regulation laws. In the administration of civil justice, the Bengal regulations were entirely dispensed with, while in criminal administration the regulations were followed more or less. Since the occupation of the province by the Company’s government till 1837 the fundamental drawback of the entire judicial administration was the want of a definite code of law, the absence of which confused the administrators in delivering justice. It was only in 1837 that rules for the civil and criminal administration, popularly known as the Assam Code, were drafted and judicial administration in the province found a sound footing. The presentation and analysis of the laws and codes prepared by the Government of Bengal in its executive capacity in consultation with the local authorities in Assam is the most distinctive feature of this comprehensive work. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

A rich collection of primary materials, the multivolume Archives of Empire provides a documentary history of nineteenth-century British imperialism from the Indian subcontinent to the Suez Canal to southernmost Africa. Barbara Harlow and Mia Carter have carefully selected a diverse range of texts that track the debates over imperialism in the ranks of the military, the corridors of political power, the lobbies of missionary organizations, the halls of royal geographic and ethnographic societies, the boardrooms of trading companies, the editorial offices of major newspapers, and far-flung parts of the empire itself. Focusing on a particular region and historical period, each volume in Archives of Empire is organized into sections preceded by brief introductions. Documents including mercantile company charters, parliamentary records, explorers’ accounts, and political cartoons are complemented by timelines, maps, and bibligraphies. Unique resources for teachers and students, these books reveal the complexities of nineteenth-century colonialism and emphasize its enduring relevance to the “global markets” of the twenty-first century. Tracing the beginnings of the British colonial enterprise in South Asia and the Middle East, From the Company to the Canal brings together key texts from the era of the privately owned British East India Company through the crises that led to the company’s takeover by the Crown in 1858. It ends with the momentous opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Government proclamations, military reports, and newspaper articles are included here alongside pieces by Rudyard Kipling, Charles Dickens, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Benjamin Disraeli, and many others. A number of documents chronicle arguments between mercantilists and free trade advocates over the competing interests of the nation and the East India Company. Others provide accounts of imperial crises—including the trial of Warren Hastings, the Indian Rebellion (Sepoy Mutiny), and the Arabi Uprising—that highlight the human, political, and economic costs of imperial domination and control.

This book analyses religious law in colonial India, exploring how it encouraged gender equality and a rethinking of the relationship between state and society.

British colonists in 1830s India lived in terror of the Thugs. Reputed to be brutal criminals, the Thugs supposedly strangled, beheaded, and robbed thousands of travelers in the goddess Kali's name. The British responded with equally brutal repression of the Thugs and developed a compulsive fascination with tales of their monstrous deeds. Did the Thugs really exist, or did the British invent them as an excuse to seize tighter control of India? Drawing on historical and anthropological accounts, Indian tales and sacred texts, and detailed analyses of the secret Thug language, Martine van Woerkens reveals for the first time the real story of the Thugs. Many different groups of Thugs actually did exist over the centuries, but the monsters the British made of them had much more to do with colonial imaginings of India than with the real Thugs. Tracing these imaginings down to the present, van Woerkens reveals the ongoing roles of the Thugs in fiction and film from Frankenstein to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.