Researching Indian Legal History from afar

I have a short piece this month on some of the sources and processes involved in doing Indian legal history without everyday access to archives in the UK or India. It might be especially useful for those at universities here in the U.S. that are members of the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) consortium which provides access to most of the resources I mention in the piece. Of course, none of this comes close to Mitra Sharafi's excellent and thorough guide to printed law reports and other primary sources!

The first 50 years of Privy Council appeals from India

I've just finished putting up all my notes for the first 50 appeals to the Privy Council from territories governed by the English East India Company (introduction and chart here). I was inspired by the fact that all of the Privy Council minutes before 1800 are now available online for free. This is an important development for anyone working on the history of the early modern British world and I would very much like to see some projects emerge which take advantage of this now-more-accessible-than-ever data. In the coming months I hope I can stir up interest and maybe create a digital resource covering all appeals to the PC before 1800. I would love to hear from others interested in seeing this happen.

Introduction

This blog is intended less as a constantly updated source of the latest scholarship on Anglo-Indian legal history but as a resource for those struggling to make their way through the morass that is research on India's colonial legal history. Please see the above tabs for resources and links to printed trials and Indian legal documents. For those interested in finding printed case reports for British India, see Mitra Sharafi's excellent guide linked on the side of the page.

The site is in its infancy and I'd welcome any comments or links to documents of webpages related to Anglo-Indian law.