A New Language of Rule: Alwar's Administrative Experiment, c. 1838–58

IF 0.8 3区 社会学 Q1 HISTORY Law and History Review Pub Date : 2023-02-14 DOI:10.1017/S0738248022000657
Elizabeth M. Thelen
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Abstract

Abstract Many rulers of newly formed Indian Princely States enacted substantial administrative reforms in the first half of the nineteenth century as they sought to reinforce their power and secure revenue in the wake of British colonial conquest. In one such case, the ruler of Alwar, Banni Singh, recruited Aminullah Khan, a former record-keeper in Delhi's colonial courts, to serve as diwan (chief minister) and undertake administrative reforms starting in 1838. These reforms focused on agrarian taxation, the civil courts, and the military, and included changes to the roles of local officials, methods of record-keeping, and the language of governance. The reforms were encoded in seven slim volumes of regulations and model forms, handwritten in Persian. Through a study of these regulations, I situate the reforms of Alwar's administration within Banni Singh's broader self-fashioning as a modern ruler in a Mughal mode and show how the reforms drew from both Mughal and colonial ideas of statecraft. The regulations represented a shift toward a legalistic conception of that state as seen in the ideals of good governance that they espoused, and they constructed contractual relationships among villagers, low-level officials in the districts, and the central state through the extensive bureaucratic procedures that they encoded.
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一种新的统治语言:阿尔瓦尔的行政实验,约1838 - 1858年
19世纪上半叶,新成立的印度诸侯国的许多统治者在英国殖民征服后,为了加强权力和确保收入,进行了实质性的行政改革。在一个这样的案例中,阿尔瓦尔的统治者Banni Singh招募了德里殖民法院的前记录保管人Aminullah Khan担任首席部长,并从1838年开始进行行政改革。这些改革的重点是土地税、民事法院和军队,包括改变地方官员的角色、记录保存方法和治理语言。这些改革被编码在七卷薄薄的条例和范本中,用波斯语手写。通过对这些规定的研究,我将阿尔瓦尔政府的改革置于Banni Singh作为莫卧儿模式的现代统治者的更广泛的自我塑造中,并展示了这些改革是如何借鉴莫卧儿和殖民治国理念的。这些规定代表着对该州的法律观念的转变,正如它们所信奉的善治理想所示,它们通过编码的广泛官僚程序,在村民、地区的低级官员和中央州之间建立了合同关系。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
1.10
自引率
12.50%
发文量
42
期刊介绍: Law and History Review (LHR), America"s leading legal history journal, encompasses American, European, and ancient legal history issues. The journal"s purpose is to further research in the fields of the social history of law and the history of legal ideas and institutions. LHR features articles, essays, commentaries by international authorities, and reviews of important books on legal history. American Society for Legal History
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