This article addresses competing visions of sovereignty that underwrite recent debates about monuments. It turns to a well-known monument built to commemorate the loss of British lives in the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857–59: the Kanpur (Cawnpore) Memorial Well Monument. The memorial stood over a well in which the bodies of 200 British women and children killed by Indian sepoys lay buried. A large landscaped enclosure was built around the memorial and only European visitors were given access to the site. On August 15, 1947, the day of Indian independence from British rule, a crowd overran the site and defaced the monument. Much of the monument was subsequently dismantled and moved to a more secluded site within the Kanpur cantonment. The desire among the British stakeholders to leave no trace of its former identity focused attention on those aspects of meaning ascribed to the monument that could not be erased. Building on the Hobbesian idea of passion as a key element of sovereignty, this article argues that the monument may be viewed as an aegis — an that deflects gaze more than it enables attentive looking.

中文翻译：

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作为庇护的纪念碑：殖民主权和坎普尔纪念井纪念碑的拆除

本文讨论了支持最近关于纪念碑的争论的主权的相互竞争的观点。它转向了一座著名的纪念碑，旨在纪念 1857-59 年印度兵叛乱中丧生的英国人：坎普尔（坎普尔）纪念井纪念碑。纪念碑矗立在一口井旁，井里埋葬着 200 名被印度土兵杀害的英国妇女和儿童的尸体。纪念馆周围建造了一个大型景观围墙，只有欧洲游客可以进入该遗址。 1947 年 8 月 15 日，印度脱离英国统治获得独立的那一天，一群人冲进了遗址并污损了纪念碑。纪念碑的大部分随后被拆除并转移到坎普尔军营内一个更僻静的地点。英国利益相关者希望不留下其以前身份的任何痕迹，因此将注意力集中在赋予这座纪念碑的那些无法抹去的意义方面。基于霍布斯式的激情作为主权关键要素的观点，本文认为这座纪念碑可以被视为一个庇护所——它更多的是转移视线，而不是集中注意力。