Empire of Convicts: Indian Penal Labor in Colonial Southeast AsiaEmpire of Convicts focuses on male and female Indians incarcerated in Southeast Asia for criminal and political offenses committed in colonial South Asia. From the seventeenth century onward, penal transportation was a key strategy of British imperial rule, exemplified by deportations first to the Americas and later to Australia. Case studies from the insular prisons of Bengkulu, Penang, and Singapore illuminate another carceral regime in the Indian Ocean World that brought South Asia and Southeast Asia together through a global system of forced migration and coerced labor. A major contribution to histories of crime and punishment, prisons, law, labor, transportation, migration, colonialism, and the Indian Ocean World, Empire of Convicts narrates the experiences of Indian bandwars (convicts) and shows how they exercised agency in difficult situations, fashioning their own worlds and even becoming “their own warders.” Anand A. Yang brings long journeys across kala pani (black waters) to life in a deeply researched and engrossing account that moves fluidly between local and global contexts. |
Contents
| 1 | |
The Global and Local Contexts of Penal Transportation | 11 |
The Bengkulu World of the Khan Brothers 17971825 | 51 |
Rajas and Robbers in Penang 17901870s | 95 |
Convict Workers and the Making of Colonial Singapore 18251870s | 143 |
Other editions - View all
Empire of Convicts: Indian Penal Labor in Colonial Southeast Asia Anand A. Yang Limited preview - 2021 |
Common terms and phrases
additional administrators Andamans arrived Australia authorities bandwars banishment BCJC Bengal Bengkulu Bhai Maharaj Singh Blundell Bombay Bonham British Brodhurst Butterworth Calcutta Chief Secy Chinese coerced labor convict body convict labor convict lines convict management convict traffic crimes criminal dacoity discipline Empire escape European Ewer exile Fateh Khan female convicts Governor History ICJC Indian Ocean inmates insular prisons island jail July June kala pani Khurruk Singh large numbers Letters lives London Madras Malacca Malays Marlborough McNair military murder native nineteenth century numbers offenders Offg officials pardons penal colonies penal settlements penal transportation Penang percent Perreau petition poligar Port Blair punishment Raffles rebels repatriation resident roads Secy sentences sepoys Sept ship Siddons Sikh Singapore Singapore Free Press slaves Southeast Asia SSFR Straits Settlements superintendent of convicts Supt Tewari tion Undersecy victs West Sumatra women