Abstract
A crucial element of sovereignty politics concerns the role that juridical techniques play in recursively creating images of the sovereign. This paper aims to render that dimension explicit by focusing on examples of crime-focused law and colonial rule at the Cape of Good Hope circa 1795. It attempts to show how this law helped to define a colonial sovereign via such idioms as proclamations, inquisitorial criminal procedures, and case narratives framing the atrocity and appropriate punishment for crimes. Referring to primary texts of the time, the paper explores how procedures and narratives of Cape law were also deeply involved in fashioning specific images of the sovereign in whose name it claimed to operate.
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Notes
See also Pavlich [19].
This turbulent transition was followed some 8 years later with the Cape’s return to the Batavian Republic in 1803 and a second British occupation in 1806 [1].
See Foucault [10, p. 51].
In particular, these have been selected from fifty ‘criminal’ cases between 1792 and 1803, all of which may be found in the CJ series at the Western Cape Archives and Records Services (WCARS).
WCARS CJ 797 #279.
WCARS CJ794 #357.
WCARS, CJ798 #169.
WCARS, CJ798 #271.
WCARS CJ 798 #131.
WCARS, CJ. 798# 41.
WCARS, CJ. 798# 85.
WCARS, CJ. 797 #225.
WCARS, CJ.799 #171.
WCARS, CJ. 796 #339. (translation by Jean Blakenberg).
For example in the case of an unintentional death of infant, a man was flogged, put in chains and ordered to 15 years at public works. (WCARS CJ 799 #304). As well, Cesar of Boegies whose ‘violent resistance’ was deemed unintentional in the course of a fight—he was flogged and given 3 years in chains. (WCARS CJ 799 #356).
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Acknowledgment
The author acknowledges with gratitude a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada standard research grant that supported this work, and Patrick McLane for his excellent research assistance. I gratefully acknowledge the helpful assistance of the staff at WCARS, and Ms. Jean Blackenberg for translation assistance.
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Pavlich, G. Cape Legal Idioms and the Colonial Sovereign. Int J Semiot Law 26, 39–54 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-012-9261-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-012-9261-1