Disciplining Punishment: Colonialism and Convict Society in the Andaman Islands"The penal colony in the Andaman Islands was a self-contained colonial society. Here, several thousand Indian convicts and indigenous people lived, worked, reproduced, and died under the supervision of British officers, who combined their power as jailers with their authority as colonial administrators. Ideologically and politically, however, convict society in the Andamans was intimately related to colonialism on the Indian mainland, and to British anxieties about the governability of Indian society." "The removal of criminals from Indian society, and their relocation to the penal colony, was intended to ensure that disorderly colonial subjects were comprehensively subjected to the power of the state. Over the longer term, punishment and rehabilitation in the Andamans were aimed at the creation of a society that was conducive to effective administration and control, and one that participated in its own control." "British rule in the Andamans derived from the larger project of modernity in the context of colonialism: it was part of a system designed to find, identify and study troublesome native subjects, to stabilize them so that they could be used as an economic resource, and to manoeuvre them into the political orbit of the state."--BOOK JACKET. |
Contents
Map of Andaman Islands ii | 1 |
Crimes and Criminals | 36 |
Labour and Loyalty | 86 |
Copyright | |
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Common terms and phrases
administrators Andaman Islands Andamanese Andamans settlement Artificer Corps authority became behaviour Bengal British Cadell caste Cellular Jail character colonial India colonial regime context convict labour convict officers convict population convict society crime criminal tribes dacoits discipline doctors effectively élites English European gangs GOI Home Judic GOI Home Port Government of India groups habitual criminals Home Department Home Port Blair Ibid ideological Indian criminals Indian society individual IOLR islands isolation labour regime legitimacy Lethbridge Lyall and Lethbridge Macaulay mainland Medical Officer medicine ment moral murder Mutiny nationalist native noted numbers offences ordinary convicts Panopticon penal colony penal regime penal settlement penal transportation physical Police political prisoners Port Blair regime Portman punishment punitive labour reform regime's rehabilitation released reward segregation Self-Supporters sentence separate settle Shere Ali sick social and political state's Stewart subjects Superintendent supervision surveillance tion transportation tribals victs wrote