As a sociology professor at the University of British Columbia, Renisa Mawani researched racial tensions in Colonial Proximities: Crossracial Encounters and Juridical Truths in British Columbia, 1871-1921 (UBC Press, 2009), revealing how Chinese settlers, indigenous people and settler Canadians were systematically oppressed by "the making of the settler regime" particular in the context of B.C. salmon canneries. It was followed by Across Oceans of Law: The Komagata Maru and Jurisdiction in the Time of Empire (Duke University Press, 2018). Through close readings of the ship, the manifest, the trial, and the anticolonial writings of Singh and others, Mawani argues that the Komagata Maru's landing raised urgent questions regarding the jurisdictional tensions between the common law and admiralty law, and, ultimately, the legal status of the sea.

Review of the author's work by BC Studies:
Colonial Proximities: Crossracial Encounters and Juridical Truths in British Columbia, 1871-1921

BOOKS:

Colonial Proximities: Crossracial Encounters and Juridical Truths in British Columbia, 1871-1921 (UBC Press, 2009) 978-0-7748-1634-2 $ 32.95

Across Oceans of Law: The Komagata Maru and Jurisdiction in the Time of Empire (Duke University Press, 2018). hc $104.95 U.S. / pb $27.95 U.S. hc 978-0-8223-7027-7 / pb 978-0-8223-7035-2

[BCBW 2018] "Komagata"