Resolving Conflict in a Colonial City: French and Tamil Law in 18th-Century Pondichéry, India

The French colony of Pondichéry, India, ruled by the French beginning in 1674, served as French India’s judicial center. Pondichéry was home to three different courts. The colony’s supreme governing body, the Sovereign Council, which served as two different legal institutions – one devoted to civil proceedings and the other to criminal proceedings. These two French courts heard mostly cases involving Frenchmen. In addition, the colony was home to a supposedly “native” court known as the Chaudrie, where civil cases involving Indians were heard. This paper examines the interplay of French and Tamil modes of disputes resolution over the course of the eighteenth century, and argues that Tamil litigants, suspects and victims had ample opportunity to shape and question the French judicial process, and in so doing complicated French legal authority. Using court cases from these varied settings, this paper also suggests that all three judicial settings – not merely the Chaudrie – served as the sites for the interplay of French and local legal idioms. Indian Ocean history, and French empire within it, has traditionally been interpreted through the lens of commercial or maritime activity. By studying European presence in the Indian Ocean through the lens of court disputes, this presentation will explore how legal interactions shaped imperial power.