Inhalt: | Sovereignty, International Law, and the Princely States of Colonial South Asia examines the role the doctrine of sovereignty played in debates over the legal status of the princely states of colonial South Asia, illustrating how different interpretations have shaped current understandings of international law and the modern Indian nation-state Sovereignty, International Law, and the Princely States of Colonial South Asia examines the role the doctrine of sovereignty played in debates over the legal status of the princely states of colonial South Asia, illustrating how different interpretations have shaped current understandings of international law and the modern Indian nation-state.This book examines the relationship between colonialism and international law by focusing on debates surrounding the legal status of the 'princely states' of colonial South Asia. The princely states were ruled by indigenous rulers and were not considered to be British territory. Instead, they remained subject to British influence exercised through political officers, resulting in enduring controversies over whether they were 'sovereign states'. This book traces how the language of sovereignty became the discourse for debating the legal status of the princely states and, in this way, mediated the exercise of political power in colonial South Asia. Focusing on the period between the mid-eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, it examines how international lawyers, British politicians, colonial officials, rulers and bureaucrats of princely states, and anticolonial nationalists continually redefined the concept of sovereignty. Assertions of sovereignty enabled these players to rely on the vocabulary of international law to resolve questions of legal status, the extent of rights, and the proper exercise of powers, and to construct a political order that was in line with their interests and aspirations. By invoking the vernacular of sovereignty in contrasting ways to support their differing visions of world order, these actors also attempted to reconfigure the boundaries among the spheres of the national, the imperial, and the international. Exploring the disputes and debates over the princely states is, therefore, key to understanding the history of sovereignty, the construction of the modern Indian nation-state, and the scope and stakes of international law itself. |
