Law, Disorder And The Colonial State: Corruption In Burma C.1900 (cambridge Imperial And Post-colonial Studies Series)

In this original study British rule in Burma is examined through quotidian acts of corruption. Saha outlines a novel way to study the colonial state as it was experienced in everyday life, revealing a complex world of state practices where legality and illegality were inseparable: the informal world upon which formal colonial power rested. Cover 1 Contents 8 Preface 10 Introduction 12 Law and disorder 14 State and society 17 Subordinate officials 21 Living with leviathan 25 1 Making Misconduct 27 Constructing an economy of discipline 27 The arithmetic of punishment 30 Clerical staff 35 Myo-oks or miniature monarchs 40 European subordinate officials 47 Misconduct in delta 53 2 The Career of Inspector Pakiri 58 State power and subordinate officials 58 '... of all the queer police of this queer country ...' 61 Inspector Pakiri 67 Players in a theatre state 81 3 Whiter than White 83 Anti-corruption and British authority 83 Deputy commissioners as bureaucratic despots 85 The plot within the plot 94 'Native' quarrels and white rule 105 4 The Male State 108 Gendered subjects, gendered state 108 Women in Burma (and their henpecked husbands) 110 Compromising situations 118 Misconduct and gendered violence 125 The fashioning of the male state 135 Conclusion 137 Corruption and the making of the modern state 138 Notes 144 Index 173 The state in colonial Burma was not an easy entity to negotiate at the turn of the twentieth century. Policemen framed innocents for crimes they themselves had committed. Magistrates solicited bribes in exchange for acquittals in court. Forestry officials produced false documents. Clerks embezzled government funds. These were mundane and everyday acts. Using previously unexplored archival sources, the daily reality of living under the Raj in this neglected corner of British India is reconstructed. Through the fascinating cases of misconduct uncovered in these documents this book argues that corruption was intrinsic to the making of the colonial legal order. Subordinate officials' daily abuses of power, and British tolerance of these abuses, served to reinforce racial divisions and enact the state as a masculine entity Front Matter....Pages i-x Introduction....Pages 1-15 Making Misconduct....Pages 16-46 The Career of Inspector Pakiri....Pages 47-71 Whiter than White....Pages 72-96 The Male State....Pages 97-125 Conclusion....Pages 126-132 Back Matter....Pages 133-166