Deporting Indian Political Suspects: Treaty port China's legal connection to India, 1914–30

Across the British Empire, the threat of trans-border crime was often considered a persistent and increasingly problematic challenge to colonial governments and British authority in semicolonial territories. This forced imperial authorities and colonial governments to consider creating legislation that enabled greater powers of punishment and deportation. In China, the British consular authorities became increasingly convinced of a challenge to their authority—and the British Empire globally—by the growth of transnational networks of Indian political dissidents who sought refuge in the treaty ports. The paper examines the creation and exercise of wartime legislation as well as the following peacetime amendments by the consular authorities in China. The wartime legislation lowered the standards of proof needed to convict political suspects and both wartime and peacetime legislation enabled the forcible repatriation of those convicted to India for further punishment. The paper therefore demonstrates the legal and penal connections between British India and British authority in China during and immediately after the First World War, and how they were forged. At the same time, I also demonstrate how many deportees later returned to China and evaded the law. This suggests that despite these legal and penal connections, individuals could often circumvent transnationally constituted and applied laws which aimed to punish and repatriate political suspects.