Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the complex web of interaction between colonial policing and surveillance, imperial intelligence networks, trans-continental anti-colonial resistance, and colonial law and four legal trials that played out across three continents during a tumultuous a two year period 1909-1910.

Paper long abstract:

On July 1, 1909, at the Institute of Imperial Studies, London, Madan Lal Dhingra fired his Browning pistol three times, the bullets piercing the body of the Sir William Curzon-Wyllie, the Political Aide-de-Camp to the Secretary of State for India. Five months later, and more than 7,000 kms away, Anant Kanhere shot and killed A.M.T. Jackson, the District Magistrate at Nasik, in Bombay Presidency. During that five month period and after, we see a remarkable shift in the British imperial view about anti-colonial resistance in India and its "spread" throughout Europe and North America. This paper examines the complex web of interaction between colonial policing and surveillance, imperial intelligence networks, trans-continental anti-colonial resistance, and colonial law and four legal trials that played out across three continents during a tumultuous a two year period 1909-1910.