Fluid Jurisdictions : : Colonial Law and Arabs in Southeast Asia / / Nurfadzilah Yahaya.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Complete eBook-Package 2020
• VerfasserIn: Yahaya, Nurfadzilah,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2020]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (270 p.) :; 5 b&w halftones, 3 maps, 2 graphs

This wide-ranging, geographically ambitious book tells the story of the Arab diaspora within the context of British and Dutch colonialism, unpacking the community's ambiguous embrace of European colonial authority in Southeast Asia. In Fluid Jurisdictions, Nurfadzilah Yahaya looks at colonial legal infrastructure – discussing how it impacted, and was impacted by, Islam and ethnicity. But more importantly, she follows the actors who used this framework to advance their particular interests.Yahaya explains why Arab minorities in the region helped to fuel the entrenchment of European colonial legalities: their itinerant lives made institutional records necessary. Securely stored in centralized repositories, such records could be presented as evidence in legal disputes. In order to ensure accountability down the line, Arab merchants valued notarial attestation land deeds, inheritance papers, and marriage certificates by recognized state officials. Colonial subjects continually played one jurisdiction against another, sometimes preferring that colonial legal authorities administer Islamic law—even against fellow Muslims.Fluid Jurisdictions draws on lively material from multiple international archives to demonstrate the interplay between colonial projections of order and their realities, Arab navigation of legally plural systems in Southeast Asia and beyond, and the fraught and deeply human struggles that played themselves out between family, religious, contract, and commercial legal orders.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Note on Transliteration and Translation -- Introduction: Establishing Legal Domains -- 1. The Lure of Bureaucracy: British Administration of Islamic Law in the Straits Settlements -- 2. Surat Kuasa: Powers of Attorney across the Indian Ocean -- 3. Resident Aliens: Exclusions of Arabs in the Netherlands Indies -- 4. Legal Incompetence: Jurisdictional Complications in the Netherlands Indies -- 5. Constructing the Index of Arabs: Colonial Imaginaries in Southeast Asia -- 6. Compromises: The Limitations of Diasporic Religious Trusts -- Conclusion: Postcolonial Transitions -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index