Scholars of closely related interests might consider the possibility to publish edited volumes together through this forum.

[Li]

I am interested in studying how Western discourse of crime, punishment
and legal modernity worked to shape
Western spectators' interpretation of non-Western criminal justice (in
my case, the Chinese one) as the imperial
expansion brought these unexpected visitors to the execution grounds
of non-Western lands, and how such interpretation
in turn shaped the latter's legal modernity. If there are people
working on similar topics, we might be able to put
things together as a volume (or even volumes) to offer the readres and
the field a global perspective. This forum
certainly provides great convenience for such collaboration. Please
feel free to email me to discuss this if interested.
Thanks to Professor Knight for making this possible.

[Suchetana Chattopadhyay]

Dear Li,

I am primarily interested in the relationships between British colonial capital, racial stereotyping, colonial police surveillance of political opponents (Pan-Islamists, communists) and colonised urban spaces with a focus on Calcutta. I'd like to compare Calcutta with Shanghai and Cairo/Alexandria to develope a comparative perspective on colonial surveillance and the colonised city. I'm also interested in the career of some police and administrative officials in Colonial India who played a role in suppressing political dissent and were in charge of 'political offenders'. I shall be pleased to send you my stuff when I write something in future if it is of any interest.

Best wishes,

Suchetana

 

Suchetana Chattopadhyay

Lecturer

Dept of History

Jadavpur University

Kolkata-32

India

 

[bi8...@binghamton.edu]

Very useful to see this website started. I have found the policing
and surveillance of political opposition movements was a major feature
of Fench surveillance in late 19th and early 20th century North
Africa. See for instance, how the French monitored with suspicion
what they deemed to be a counter-empire in the Sanusiya institutional
movement in Libya and Saharan countries, in Henri Duveyrier, La
Confrrie musulmane de Sidi Mohammed Ben ‘Ali Es-Senousi et son
domaine geographique. (1886).

One finds similar approaches of the British in surveying with
considerable suspiscion popular culture and counter political
movements, as in the British colonial was prevalent in colonial
orientalist scholarship, and in J.W. McPherson’s The Moulids of Egypt
(1942). McPherson was a colonial police official serving in this
capacity in the 1930's.

Patrick Kane
Ph.D. Candidate
Binghamton University
pk...@binghamton.edu