{"title":"一个真正的复制品?孟买印度委员会的文件和法制生产","authors":"Dominic Vendell","doi":"10.1017/S0738248022000372","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This essay examines the role of Indian-language documentation in the production of legality in colonial western India, focusing on the workings of the Bombay Inam Commission (1852-1863). It situates legal validation of claims to tax-free land revenue within the broader process of securing, organizing, classifying, and registering Marathi- and Persian-language documents. Combating the effects of rain, dirt, and pests on old state records often sold as “waste paper,” the Inam Commission deployed material interventions to secure a legal archive for verifying individual claims to property. While such evidence weighed heavily in the evaluation of the testimony and corroborating documents of an individual claimant’s case-file, questions of writing also shaped the legal reasoning of the Commission. Inquiries about any given document’s conformity to or deviation from conventional style figured prominently in judgments about its authenticity. The scribe Sayyid Usman’s investigation in 1856 of a date in a Persian document attributed to the Mysore ruler Tipu Sultan struggled to establish the parameters of conventional style against the plurality of entangled regimes of property. I argue that a material approach to writing allows us to better understand the imperfect and dispersed production of legal truth in imperial settings.","PeriodicalId":17960,"journal":{"name":"Law and History Review","volume":"41 1","pages":"543 - 563"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8000,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"A True Copy? Documents and the Production of Legality in the Bombay Inam Commission\",\"authors\":\"Dominic Vendell\",\"doi\":\"10.1017/S0738248022000372\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"This essay examines the role of Indian-language documentation in the production of legality in colonial western India, focusing on the workings of the Bombay Inam Commission (1852-1863). It situates legal validation of claims to tax-free land revenue within the broader process of securing, organizing, classifying, and registering Marathi- and Persian-language documents. Combating the effects of rain, dirt, and pests on old state records often sold as “waste paper,” the Inam Commission deployed material interventions to secure a legal archive for verifying individual claims to property. While such evidence weighed heavily in the evaluation of the testimony and corroborating documents of an individual claimant’s case-file, questions of writing also shaped the legal reasoning of the Commission. Inquiries about any given document’s conformity to or deviation from conventional style figured prominently in judgments about its authenticity. The scribe Sayyid Usman’s investigation in 1856 of a date in a Persian document attributed to the Mysore ruler Tipu Sultan struggled to establish the parameters of conventional style against the plurality of entangled regimes of property. I argue that a material approach to writing allows us to better understand the imperfect and dispersed production of legal truth in imperial settings.\",\"PeriodicalId\":17960,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"Law and History Review\",\"volume\":\"41 1\",\"pages\":\"543 - 563\"},\"PeriodicalIF\":0.8000,\"publicationDate\":\"2023-03-01\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"\",\"citationCount\":\"0\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"Law and History Review\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"98\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0738248022000372\",\"RegionNum\":3,\"RegionCategory\":\"社会学\",\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"\",\"PubModel\":\"\",\"JCR\":\"Q1\",\"JCRName\":\"HISTORY\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Law and History Review","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0738248022000372","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
A True Copy? Documents and the Production of Legality in the Bombay Inam Commission
This essay examines the role of Indian-language documentation in the production of legality in colonial western India, focusing on the workings of the Bombay Inam Commission (1852-1863). It situates legal validation of claims to tax-free land revenue within the broader process of securing, organizing, classifying, and registering Marathi- and Persian-language documents. Combating the effects of rain, dirt, and pests on old state records often sold as “waste paper,” the Inam Commission deployed material interventions to secure a legal archive for verifying individual claims to property. While such evidence weighed heavily in the evaluation of the testimony and corroborating documents of an individual claimant’s case-file, questions of writing also shaped the legal reasoning of the Commission. Inquiries about any given document’s conformity to or deviation from conventional style figured prominently in judgments about its authenticity. The scribe Sayyid Usman’s investigation in 1856 of a date in a Persian document attributed to the Mysore ruler Tipu Sultan struggled to establish the parameters of conventional style against the plurality of entangled regimes of property. I argue that a material approach to writing allows us to better understand the imperfect and dispersed production of legal truth in imperial settings.
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