Execution and Empire: A History of Judicial Killing Under British Colonial Rule in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

This thesis examines the role of capital punishment in facilitating the governance of British colonies throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The death penalty was the ‘ultimate penalty of the law’ in British colonies and was extensively used to punish serious crimes including murder, rape, and treason. Beyond its obvious penal function, the death penalty served a crucial political function throughout the period in question; it was used by colonial authorities to construct and maintain social hierarchies, control colonial populations, and suppress actions that threatened the stability of the colonial state. Despite the widespread use of executions across British colonies, studies of colonial capital punishment have predominantly studied the phenomenon on a local or regional level. This thesis bridges this historiographical gap by producing a comparative study of judicial execution in different colonies across the geographical expanses of the British Empire, setting localised developments within their broader imperial context.

The thesis discusses the legal basis for capital punishment within the British Empire’s pluralistic legal systems; the violence that surrounded capital trials; modes and rituals of colonial executions; the racialised application of the penalty and the Royal Prerogative of Mercy; and the use of the punishment in response to rebellions and upheavals. The thesis focuses on its use in three comparable, yet diverse, colonies: the Straits Settlements, Natal, and Fiji. I examined over 3000 capital cases that occurred within the three territories during (and sometimes following) the colonial period. These case studies are situated within the broader imperial context, as the transplantation of law, penal reform, anti-colonial movements, and other imperial events came to influence local practices.

This thesis makes several contributions to both colonial histories and histories of punishment. Firstly, it expands historiographical understanding of colonial violence. Much of the work on colonial violence has centred on moments of crisis. Whilst this thesis explores a legal manifestation of colonial violence that was extensively mobilised during these moments of upheaval, it recognises that capital punishment was also structurally embedded into colonial legal systems and was deployed as a tool of colonial violence in moments of peace as well as during episodic crises. Relatedly, it shows that race had an overwhelming influence in determining the application of capital punishment across the British Empire. This ties into a broader argument, that the death penalty was a political tool, used to reflect and cement the political values and priorities of colonial governments. Finally, the thesis engages in the ongoing debate surrounding the relationship that existed between colonies and the metropole. Drawing on both the legal ideals and practical uses of the death penalty in British colonies, it reveals a continuous balancing act between local imperatives and imperial oversight. It shows that despite important similarities in the experiences of condemned individuals across the broad geographical range of the British Empire, there were also significant local variations and departures that make it impossible to speak of a single colonial experience of capital punishment.