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Giorgio Agamben's now axiomatic formulation of the 'state of exception' is problematic when we consider the colonial world. As scholars have pointed out, Agamben's framework is inherently Eurocentric and fails to consider how racial difference rendered colonial rule an inherently authoritarian and anti-democratic enterprise from the outset. The blurring of executive, legislative, and judicial powers that Agamben identifies with the state of exception were, in fact, integral, systemic features of colonial power. Using British India as a case study, this article seeks to re-orient our understanding of states of emergency or siege away from the framework of the exception to consider how they may be more usefully considered as general techniques of colonial power. In so doing, it argues that rather than representing a point of rupture or change, the First World War simply offered an opportunity for the British colonial state to draw upon and expand an already extensive repertoire of coercive executive and legal practices that had been central to colonial control since the early nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By the eve of the First World War, the world's two most powerful imperial powers, Britain and France, had begun to work together in order to defeat the growing menace posed by transnational anti-colonial networks operating within Europe. When it came to the front lines of the anti-colonial struggle, however, Franco-British collaborative policing efforts continued to be plagued by persistent rivalries and contestations between these erstwhile enemies. This is particularly evident in the case of the French-controlled settlement of Chandernagore in India, which was one of the centres of revolutionary activity in Bengal. This article examines how Chandernagore's unique legal and political status as a French possession enabled it to become a 'haven' or 'Alsatia' for Indian revolutionaries operating against the British colonial state. It traces how the persistence of this vestige of French sovereignty placed it at the centre of repeated conflicts between British and French colonial authorities over the detection, arrest, and extradition of these revolutionaries, revealing both the possibilities and limitations of colonial police cooperation. Far from being peripheral in nature, these conflicts cut to the heart of even more fiercely contested debates within the imperial metropole about the relationship between national sovereignty and international law in an increasingly global age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]