Britain abolished the death penalty for murder in 1965, but many of Britain's last colonies retained capital murder laws until the 1990s. In this book, James M. Campbell presents the first history of the death sentences imposed under British colonial rule in the late twentieth century; the decision-making processes that determined if condemned prisoners lived or died; and the diverse paths to death penalty abolition across the empire. Based on a rich archive of recently released government records, as well as legislative debates, court papers, newspapers and autobiographies, Reluctant Abolitionists examines connections between the death penalty, British politics, decolonisation and the rise of international abolitionist movements. Through analysis of murder trials, clemency appeals, executions and legal reforms across more than 30 British colonies, it reveals the limits of British opposition to the death penalty and the enduring connections between capital punishment and empire.
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The first full account of the death penalty and its abolition in Britain's last colonies in the late twentieth century.
Tables; Maps; Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations of archival
sources; Introduction;
1. 'A vast and extended web': the colonial death
penalty before and after British abolition;
2. Decolonisation and the royal
prerogative of mercy;
3. 'To hang or not to hang?' Clemency and de facto
abolition in Hong Kong;
4. The enduring colonial death penalty;
5. 'Cut the
noose loose': protest and policy in the late-1970s;
6. 'This dog is not
sleeping': Britain, the dependent territories and the death penalty in the
1980s;
7. The last rites of Imperial executions; Epilogue; Appendix:
governors of select British overseas territories; Bibliography; Index.
James M. Campbell is Associate Professor of American History at the University of Leicester. His publications include Slavery on Trial: Race, Class and Criminal Justice in Antebellum Richmond, Virginia, Crime and Punishment in African American History, and essays on the death penalty in the Caribbean and the United States.
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