'Banditry and the Law: The problems of Toryism and thuggee in early modern Ireland and eighteenth century India.'

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• Alix Chartrand, Faculty of History
• Wednesday 18 November 2015, 17:00-19:00
• Wolfson Seminar Room South, Trinity College .

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Kate Bruce-Lockhart.

Throughout the early modern period and the eighteenth century, one of the primary ways in which the British attempted to legitimate their claims to sovereignty in Ireland and India was through the law, which was widely considered to be one of the essential components of any civilised society. However, while the law was used as a tool of education within colonial settings, the repeated manipulation of this law by the British when challenged by members of the Irish or Indian population also indicates that this had specific limitations. This paper considers the ways in which the British attempted to control the behaviour of the colonised through the law, and analyses the ways in which subversive behaviours challenged larger British claims to sovereignty. The paper will focus on two specific forms of subversive behaviour, the highway bandits known in Ireland as tories and in India as dacoits or thugs. Both of these cases serve to illustrate the extent to which banditry was perceived as a threat to the unity of the state. Furthermore, they also represent clear examples of cases in which the British ignored, bypassed or disregarded the legal systems they had previously upheld in order to deal with behaviours that they believed to have serious social and political implications.

This talk is part of the Violence and Conflict Graduate Workshop, Faculty of History series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Violence and Conflict Graduate Workshop, Faculty of History
• Wolfson Seminar Room South, Trinity College

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