Colonial states, colonial rule, colonial governmentalities: Implications for the study of historical state crime

The colonial state has been an object of intense study and debate among historians and postcolonial scholars. In this special issue, devoted to questions of colonial state crime, I consider the utility of the colonial state as a conceptual and analytic category for state crime scholars. Focusing upon European colonialism in South Asia, the article first examines definitional problems: within what normative parameters might colonial state behaviour be understood and, thus, its transgressions and crimes registered? I then move to consider two contrasting schools of historiography and their difficulties in settling upon some agreed view of how colonizing foreigners connected with indigenous elites and masses to develop and implement strategies of rule. I suggest that the concept of a colonial state, to which culpability for state crimes may be ascribed, is a chimera and of limited use today. Instead, I describe a model of colonial governmentality and, through a case study of mass famine death, illustrate both its strengths and weaknesses for making sense of how such tragedies occurred and thus how insights from the historical field might improve our understanding of modern and postcolonial states today.