The power of parwanas: Indo-Persian grants and the making of empire in eighteenth-century southern India
dc.contributor.author | Hodges, LH | |
dc.contributor.author | Chatterjee, N | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2023-10-11T14:13:04Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2022-11-14 | |
dc.date.updated | 2022-11-05T21:06:51Z | |
dc.description.abstract | This article examines Persian-language orders—parwanas—issued by regimes that succeeded the Mughal Empire in South Asia, to European trading companies. Focussing in particular on the mid-eighteenth-century exchanges between the Nizam of Hyderabad; the Nawab of Arcot; and the French Compagnie des Indes, we see how Mughal-style parwanas, or sub-imperial orders, previously used to give instructions or to make or withdraw grants, were transformed into a form of political currency. They were now used to exchange military and fiscal resources between South Asian state-builders and militarised European corporations, and to secure political legitimacy for all within a putative Mughal imperium. Moreover, the legal fiction of Mughal sovereignty led to a grants race, such that rivals—European and South Asian—sought more and more parwanas, while also querying the legitimacy of authorities that issued them. The very fragility of the Mughal empire and the lability of the political landscape in eighteenth-century South Asia was thus generative of prolific Persian legal documentation, as well as its rewiring to novel uses. European empire-builders negotiated this legal landscape with only partial literacy, consequently fetishizing the material aspects and ceremonial accompaniments of Persian legal documents, and according them power beyond their immediate substance. | en_GB |
dc.description.sponsorship | European Commission | en_GB |
dc.description.sponsorship | Economic and Social Research Council | en_GB |
dc.identifier.citation | Vol. 41, No. 3, pp. 479–500 | en_GB |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10871/134209 | |
dc.identifier | ORCID: 0000-0002-8977-7355 (Chatterjee, Nandini) | |
dc.identifier | ScopusID: 35795034800 (Chatterjee, Nandini) | |
dc.language.iso | en | en_GB |
dc.publisher | Cambridge University Press | en_GB |
dc.rights | © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Society for Legal History. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work. | en_GB |
dc.title | The power of parwanas: Indo-Persian grants and the making of empire in eighteenth-century southern India | en_GB |
dc.type | Article | en_GB |
dc.date.available | 2023-10-11T14:13:04Z | |
dc.identifier.issn | 0738-2480 | |
dc.description | This is the final version. Available from Cambridge University Press via the DOI in this record. | en_GB |
dc.identifier.eissn | 1939-9022 | |
dc.identifier.journal | Law and History Review | en_GB |
dc.relation.ispartof | Law and History Review | |
dc.rights.uri | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ | en_GB |
dcterms.dateAccepted | 2022-10-05 | |
dcterms.dateSubmitted | 2021-06-30 | |
rioxxterms.version | VoR | en_GB |
rioxxterms.licenseref.startdate | 2022-10-05 | |
rioxxterms.type | Journal Article/Review | en_GB |
refterms.dateFCD | 2022-11-05T21:07:13Z | |
refterms.versionFCD | P | |
refterms.dateFOA | 2023-10-11T14:13:09Z | |
refterms.panel | C | en_GB |
refterms.dateFirstOnline | 2022-11-14 |
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's licence is described as © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Society for Legal
History. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits
non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered
and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial
re-use or in order to create a derivative work.