The Sovereign Exception: Interpreting ‘British Subjects’ in the Queen’s Amnesty of 1858

The ‘Amnesty’ constituted an important part of the Queen’s Proclamation which was announced on 1 November 1858 after the brutal suppression of the Revolt of 1857. The Queen’s Proclamation has been studied by the anthropologist Bernard S. Cohn as ‘a cultural statement’ which was seeped in both contradictory and complementary feudal and modernist idioms.

This was evident in the Queen’s Proclamation, which promised ‘equal and impartial protection of the law’ to the native subjects of the conquered Indian subcontinent. It was further stated that in the framing and administration of this law, ‘due regard would be paid to the ancient rights, usages and customs of India’.