Between 1858 and 1939, the British transported over 80,000 Indian and Burmese convicts to the penal colony of the Andaman Islands. In the face of Indigenous hostility to passing and shipwrecked vessels, Britain’s initial ambition was to use convicts to occupy the archipelago and secure sea routes, build necessary infrastructure, Continue Reading
Remembering Indian Convicts in Southeast Asia
From the end of the eighteenth century up to the early 1860s, the East India Company transported c. 25,000 convicts to penal settlements across Southeast Asia. Most came from British India (including Burma), with smaller numbers from the Crown Colony of Sri Lanka. The earliest destinations were Bencoolen and the Continue Reading
Shifting The Gaze on Histories of Penal Transportation
In some of our recent writing (available freely here and here) and in some of our recent talks we have been arguing in favour of approaches to the history of convict transportation that started in the receiving destinations: the penal colonies. Our ambition was to move the focus of our Continue Reading
Histories and legacies of intra-colonial transportation: an introduction
What would post-colonial and multi-ethnic histories and societies look like if they were written from the perspective of the descendants of non-European convict transportees? This question is the starting point for this new project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust. It focuses on six case studies in the former empires of Continue Reading