Racial boundaries in colonial publics are more permeable than historians assume

Evidence

Perhaps even more surprisingly, Anglo-Indians, as contemporaries referred to the European population in India, expressed concern that Justice Norman’s decision threatened the legal rights of all subjects residing in colonial territories, whether Indian or British. … The press coverage during the Wahhabi trials, however, suggests the permeability of the boundaries between the Anglo-Indian and Indian public and the wide and vacillating spectrum of discourses on the relationship between the rule of law, race, and empire. — Julia Stephens, The Phantom Wahhabi, 142

Categorization

• XREF: Directly engages and complicates Partha Chatterjee’s ‘rule of colonial difference’ and Elizabeth Kolsky’s work on law’s suspension for white violence against Indians.
• DEEPTHINKING: Challenges a foundational framework in colonial historiography: that rule-of-law discourse was a white-privilege instrument, showing it could also generate cross-racial legal solidarity.