The Birth of Criminology in Colonial South Asia: 1765–1947

Abstract

This chapter explores the nature and development of colonial criminology in British India. It analyzes a series of moments during which this nascent criminology of the subcontinent was given shape and form, including eighteenth century responses to dacoit gangs, the emergence of criminal classification in the early nineteenth century, shortly followed by demands to respond to the so-called Thuggee phenomenon, the development of new thinking about criminal tribes in the middle of the nineteenth century and the arrival of Western criminology in the early part of the twentieth century. In fact, for most of the colonial period and across a swathe of territory ranging from Peshawar in the west to..