When I started researching prisoners and exiles from French Indochina, over fifteen years ago, one of the most haunting prisoners I encountered was a young scholar named Lý Liễu. He had gone to Hong Kong to study at the age of twelve and ended up becoming involved in anti-colonial politics. Continue Reading
Exhibition: Exiles and Prisoners from French Indochina in New Caledonia (Part 2)
This blog presents the second part of an exhibition that launched at the Amicale Vietnamienne, Nouméa, on 21 February 2024. The exhibition – presented here in the English version – explores the history of deportation and exile from French Indochina to New Caledonia, within its global context. Readers might be Continue Reading
Of Satellites and Sentiment: the descendants of Vietnamese prisoners in French Guiana
On April 18 2008, Vietnamese journalist Danh Đức was standing in the rain at the Kourou Space Centre, the European Space Agency’s spaceport in French Guiana, a territory that is, as an overseas département, still an integral part of France. Eyes heavenward, Danh Đức was eager to witness the launch Continue Reading
‘Cassim’: an extraordinary life – Part 2
We closed Part 1 of our blog on Cassim, with details of his penal transportation from Mauritius to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania). From there, he was transferred to Moreton Bay (modern Brisbane) and sent to the Limestone Hills (modern Ipswich) to look after government livestock. Here, we note that during Continue Reading
Genealogies of Enslavement and Convictism in the British Empire
In a former blog, I wrote about the enslaved girl Constance Couronne, who in 1834 with her cousin Elizabeth Verloppe was transported from the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius to the penal colony of New South Wales. The two children had been convicted of attempting to poison their mistress. Constance lived Continue Reading
‘Cassim’: an extraordinary life – Part I
One of the graves that can be found in Minjeribah (North Stradbroke Island)’s Dunwich Cemetery in the Australian state of Queensland bears the name of John Vincent Cassim and his wife Mary (Figure 1). I recently returned to the grave site with my friend and fellow historian Tamsin O’Connor, who Continue Reading
Children, Caste and Censuses in the Andaman Islands
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
Constance Couronne: from enslaved child in Mauritius to emancipated convict grandmother in New South Wales
On 23 August 2022, I was hugely honoured to be invited to present findings from our Leverhulme Trust funded project at the “International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition”, held at the Nelson Mandela Centre for African Culture on the island of Mauritius, in the 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