Thuggee

This book provides a reassessment of thuggee in the context of banditry and the colonial state in early nineteenth-century India.

Often described merely as a colonial construction, the phenomenon of thuggee remains one of the more contentious and controversial subjects of nineteenth-century south Asian history. Based largely on new material, this book constitutes the first in-depth examination of thuggee as a type of banditry, emerging in a specific socio-economic and geographic context. The British usually described the thugs as fanatic assassins and Kali-worshippers, yet Wagner argues that the history of thuggee need no longer be limited to the study of its representation.

KIM A. WAGNER completed his PhD in History at the University of Cambridge, UK, in 2003. He is currently a Research Fellow at King’s College Cambridge, and Associate Researcher at the University of Edinburgh. He works on banditry and the methodological use of trial records, as well as colonial fears of indigenous conspiracies.

Introduction * Thuggee reassessed * PART 1 * Engaging the colonial ‘archives of repression’ * Thuggee in pre-colonial India * The discovery of thuggee, Etawah 1809 * Thomas Perry and the first arrests * N.J. Halhed in Sindouse, Oct. 1812 * PART 2 * Sindouse * The practice of thuggee * The itinerant underworld * The world of the thugs * PART III * Halhed in Sindouse – a second look * Sindouse – the aftermath * Continued measures against thugs * The operations commence * The thuggee campaign * From Sindouse to Sagar * Epilogue