This ground-breaking book uses Foucaultian language and method in a convincing way to “excavate” how the “discursive representations of Indian revolutionaries informed and enabled the … states of exception through which they were policed” in British-controlled India (23).1 McQuaid provides a fascinating discussion of historical debate about political violence as it evolved in India from the eighteenth century to the making of terrorism as an international legal category in 1937. Concurrently, he gives a revealing account of anti-British violence in India from the nineteenth century through independence. An epilogue devoted to the post-1947 legacy of colonial anti-terrorism regulation connects it with twenty-first century attitudes and practices internationally. Although this book is fundamentally a history—within a Foucaultian framework—and based on extensive research in the archives of India, Britain, Japan, and Switzerland, it discusses issues of gender, sexuality, and psychology, drawing insights from anthropology, sociology, and political theory.
McQuaid argues that...