Historical Gaps and Non-existent Sources: The Case of the Chaudrie Court in French India

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dc.contributor.authorAgmon, Dannaen
dc.date.accessioned2022-01-28T14:54:32Zen
dc.date.available2022-01-28T14:54:32Zen
dc.date.issued2021-10-01en
dc.date.updated2022-01-28T14:54:29Zen
dc.description.abstractThis article develops a typology of historical and archival gaps - physical, historiographical, and epistemological - to consider how non-existent sources are central to understanding colonial law and governance. It does so by examining the institutional and archival history of a court known as the Chaudrie in the French colony of Pondichéry in India in the eighteenth century, and integrating problems that are specific to the study of legal history - questions pertaining to jurisdiction, codification, evidence, and sovereignty - with issues all historians face regarding power and the making of archives. Under French rule, Pondichéry was home to multiple judicial institutions, administered by officials of the French East Indies Company. These included the Chaudrie court, which existed at least from 1700 to 1827 as a forum where French judges were meant to dispense justice according to local Tamil modes of dispute resolution. However, records of this court prior to 1766 have not survived. By drawing on both contemporaneous mentions of the Chaudrie and later accounts of its workings, this study centers missing or phantom sources, severed from the body of the archive by political, judicial, and bureaucratic decisions. It argues that the Chaudrie was a court where jurisdiction was decoupled from sovereignty, and this was the reason it did not generate a state-managed and preserved archive of court records for itself until the 1760s. The Chaudrie's early history makes visible a relationship between law and its archive that is paralleled by approaches to colonial governance in early modern French Empire.en
dc.description.versionAccepted versionen
dc.format.extentPages 979-1006en
dc.format.extent28 page(s)en
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifierPII S0010417521000311 (Article number)en
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417521000311en
dc.identifier.eissn1475-2999en
dc.identifier.issn0010-4175en
dc.identifier.issue4en
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10919/107969en
dc.identifier.volume63en
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherCambridge University Pressen
dc.relation.urihttp://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000721296400012&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=930d57c9ac61a043676db62af60056c1en
dc.rightsIn Copyrighten
dc.rights.urihttp://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/en
dc.subjectArts & Humanitiesen
dc.subjectSocial Sciencesen
dc.subjectLife Sciences & Biomedicineen
dc.subjectAnthropologyen
dc.subjectHistoryen
dc.subjectSociologyen
dc.subjectFranceen
dc.subjectIndiaen
dc.subjectlawen
dc.subjectcolonialismen
dc.subjectempireen
dc.subjectarchivesen
dc.subjectsovereigntyen
dc.subjectjurisdictionen
dc.subjectPondicheryen
dc.subjectChaudrieen
dc.subjectMAYORS COURTen
dc.subjectLAWen
dc.subjectLITIGATIONen
dc.subjectPROPERTYen
dc.subjectMADRASen
dc.subject1601 Anthropologyen
dc.subject2103 Historical Studiesen
dc.subjectAnthropologyen
dc.titleHistorical Gaps and Non-existent Sources: The Case of the Chaudrie Court in French Indiaen
dc.title.serialComparative Studies in Society and Historyen
dc.typeArticle - Refereeden
dc.type.dcmitypeTexten
dc.type.otherArticleen
dc.type.otherJournalen
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pubs.organisational-group/Virginia Tech/Liberal Arts and Human Sciencesen
pubs.organisational-group/Virginia Tech/Liberal Arts and Human Sciences/Historyen
pubs.organisational-group/Virginia Tech/Liberal Arts and Human Sciences/CLAHS T&R Facultyen

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