Deadlier than the male? Women and the death penalty in colonial Kenya and Nyasaland, c.1920-57

The position of women and the operation of justice were both contentious issues in colonial Africa. However, when combined in the discussion and sentencing of African women charged with murder and facing the death penalty for their crimes, a relatively coherent gendered discourse emerged: African women were frequently regarded as lacking the emotional and mental development to render them fully responsible for their actions before the law, and consequently liable for the death penalty. What challenged this benevolent, patriarchal discourse were the actions and responses of the women themselves, transgressing supposed gender stereotypes and social hierarchies in their use of lethal violence. This article attempts to analyze violent African female crime in Africa through the medium of High Court murder trials in Kenya and Nyasaland, focusing on both colonial judges’ perceptions of women as perpetrators of violent crime and on women’s responses and perceptions of their own criminality. Contrary to much existing feminist criminology, this paper will argue that women were not just reluctant killers; they could also be violent in their own right and for their own self-interest

Killing the condemned: the practice and process of capital punishment in British Africa, 1900–1950s

Copyright © 2008 Cambridge University PressCapital punishment in British colonial Africa was not just a method of crime control or individual punishment, but an integral aspect of colonial networks of power and violence. The treatment of condemned criminals and the rituals of execution which brought their lives to an end illustrate the tensions within colonialism surrounding the relationship between these states and their subjects, and with their metropolitan overlords. The state may have had the legal right to kill its subjects, but this right and the manner in which it was enacted were contested. This article explores the interactions between various actors in this penal ‘theatre of death’, looking at the motivations behind changing uses of the death penalty, the treatment of the condemned convicts whilst they awaited death, and the performance of a hanging itself to show how British colonial governments in Africa attempted to create and manage the deaths of their condemned subjects

Networks in imperial history

This is the final version of the article. Available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.Over the course of the last two decades Imperial history has undergone a revival. Inspired by the ‘cultural turn’ and the rise of Global history, Imperial historians have moved away from accounts that focus on a metropolitan centre and a colonial periphery. Instead historians have advocated a decentred approach to the study of empire, which emphasises the importance of playing close attention to the multiple networks of capital, goods, information and people that existed within and between empires. While these networked understandings of empire have added much to our understanding of imperialism, the articles in this special issue argue that historians must remain sensitive to the specifics of the imperial experience, the limits of imperialism’s global reach, and the way in which imperialism could lead to new forms of exclusion and inequality

"The extreme penalty of the law": mercy and the death penalty as aspects of state power in colonial Nyasaland, c. 1903-47

Open access article.Capital punishment was the pinnacle of the colonial judicial system and its use of state violence, but has previously been neglected as a topic of historical research in Africa. This article is based on the case files and legal records of over 800 capital trials – predominantly for murder – dating between 1900 and 1947. It outlines the functioning of the legal system in Nyasaland and the tensions between “violence” and “humanitarianism” in the use and reform of the death penalty. Capital punishment was a political penalty as much as a judicial punishment, with both didactic and deterrent functions: it operated through mercy and the sparing of condemned lives as well as through executions. Mercy in Nyasaland was consistent with colonial political objectives and cultural values: it was decided not only on the facts of cases, but according to British conceptions of “justice”, “order”, “criminality”, and “African” behaviour. This article analyses the use of mercy in Nyasaland to provide a lens on the nature of colonial governance, and the tensions between African and colonial understandings of violence.Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) and the Beit Fund, University of Oxfor

Decorum or Deterrence? The Politics of Execution in Malawi, 1915-1966

This article is not the final print version. The print version is available at http://www.Bergpublishers.com.Capital punishment - specifically public execution - is here investigated not simply as a judicial punishment, but as a lens through which to view the civil and socio-political development of Malawi from the colonial to early independence eras. Public executions were an exceptional measure, employed at times of marked social and political unrest, being ordered by the colonial government in response to the Chilembwe Uprising in 1915 and by Prime Minister Banda in 1965 in the aftermath of the Cabinet crisis and Chipembere Uprising. This article looks at the continuities and changes in the practice and signification of these judicial killings

Imperial gallows : capital punishment, violence and colonial rule in Britain's African territories, c. 1903-1968

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

African Women, Colonial Justice and White Man’s Mercy

This article offers the first comparative analysis of the treatment of African women in British and French criminal law. Using evidence from 115 trial records involving female accused from French West Africa and Kenya, the Gold Coast and Nyasaland, it explores the processes through which ideas of race, status and public order intertwined with European and local African gender norms, both within courtrooms and political offices, to determine the outcome of murder cases involving female accused. The article investigates the development of a colonial “white man’s mercy”, analysing the cultural sensibilities and politico-legal reasoning which led to many African women receiving mercy and judicial leniency. It shows how intersections of racial and gendered stereotypes, many shared across French and British colonial cultures, often worked in favour of African murderesses through the operation of mercy processes. It further explores the treatment of “wicked women” who were only spared execution explicitly on grounds “of [their] sex” and often against the opinion of on-the-ground colonial judges. Finally, it interrogates those cases where women were executed, to highlight the limits of gender in determining sentencing.Cet article présente la première analyse comparée du traitement des femmes africaines par les justices coloniales britannique et française. En analysant 115 procès contre des accusées en Afrique occidentale française, au Kenya, en Côte-de-l’Or et au Nyassaland, cette étude examine les manières dont les représentations de la race, du statut social et de l’ordre public s’entrecroisent avec les normes de genre européennes et africaines, dans les tribunaux et les bureaux de l’administration, et déterminent l’issue des procès. L’analyse des sensibilités culturelles et des raisonnements politico-légaux met à jour le développement d’une « clémence de l’homme blanc », conduisant les autorités coloniales à faire preuve de clémence et d’indulgence envers la majorité des meurtrières africaines. L’article montre comment le croisement de stéréotypes raciaux et de genre souvent partagés par les cultures coloniales française et britannique jouaient en faveur des meurtrières africaines. Il explore également le traitement judiciaire des « méchantes femmes » qui ne durent qu’à « leur sexe » d’échapper à l’exécution, souvent contre l’avis des magistrats coloniaux de base. Finalement, l’article interroge les cas d’exécutions de femmes pour mettre en lumière les limites du genre dans la détermination de la sentence

Editors’ Introduction: Networks in Imperial History

Over the course of the last two decades imperial history has undergone a revival. Inspired by the “cultural turn” and the rise of global history, imperial historians have moved away from accounts that focus on a metropolitan center and a colonial periphery. Instead, they have advocated a decentered approach to the study of empire, which emphasizes the importance of paying close attention to the multiple networks of capital, goods, information, and people that existed within and between empires. While these networked treatments of empire have added much to our understanding of imperialism, the articles in this special issue argue that historians must remain sensitive to the specifics of the imperial experience, the limits of imperialism’s global reach, and the way in which imperialism could lead to new forms of exclusion and inequality