Crime in the Colonial City : Law and French Empire in India

Crime in the Colonial City explores how and where colonial law take its shape by turning to the eighteenth-century courts, homes, and streets of the Indian cities of Pondichéry and Chandernagor, two bustling and diverse French-ruled towns. By uncovering the dramatic details of five criminal investigations, Danna Agmon reveals how experiences with French law in India allowed colonized residents and their allies to assert control over their own fates by exploiting the flexibility – and weakness – of the French legal system, itself an aspirational symbol of colonial state power.

In theory, all residents of the French-ruled towns in India, regardless of their national, linguistic, ethnic, or religious background, were subject to French legal codes and the French Crown's sovereignty and jurisdiction. Reality, however, was more flexible. Crime in the Colonial City provides a never-before gained understanding of the social fabric of French colonialism in India, while also exploring the limits of legal institutions in the making of imperial sovereignty.