Abstract
On the morning of 22 February 1858, Colonel Horace Man2, under the reverberating sounds of a 21-gun-salute, announced the British reoccupation of the Andamans.3 Horace Man opened a settlement at the Old harbour rechristened as Port Blair in honour of Colonel Archibald Blair. The imperial adornment of the Andamans was begun with the unfurling of the Union Jack and stationing of Her Majesty’s gun vessels around the Settlement.4 As the British began their recovery of Lucknow and Kanpur in northern India in March 1858 on the other side of the peninsula, a ship with 200 fettered convicts set sail for the Andamans.
Conscience forbids a man to rob a man But frowns not when an empire proud & great By some deep subtle diplomatic plans Proceeds to steal a state1
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Notes
Several historians and writers present the heightened desire for an overseas penal station in the wake of the Revolt of 1857 as the raison d’etre for the colonization of the Andamans in 1858. See Majumdar, The Penal Settlement, 1975; K.S. Singh, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, 1994; Sen, Disciplining Punishment, 2000; Abdul Subhan, Geography — Islands of Andaman and Nicobar, Government High School, Port Blair, 1938
According to Nilkantha Sastri the Cholas conquered the Nicobars (called Manakkavaram) in 1025AD. See K.A. Nilkantha Sastri, History of South India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1955 [1999].
Chakravarti,’ seafaring, Ships and Ship Owners’, 2002, pp. 28–61. Also see Kenneth McPherson, ‘Trade and Traders in the Bay of Bengal: Fifteenth to Nineteenth Centuries’, and Om Prakash, ‘European Corporate Enterprises and the Politics of Trade in India, 1600–1800’, in R. Mukherjee and L. Subramanium, eds, Politics and Trade in the Indian Ocean World, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1998, pp. 183–209
Jennifer L. Gaynor, ‘Maritime Ideologies and Ethnic Anomalies: Sea Space and the Structure of Subalternity in the Southeast Asian Littoral’, Seascapes, Littoral Cultures, and Trans-Oceanic Exchanges, 12–15 Feb 2003, Library of Congress, Washington D.C., http://www.historycooperative.org/proceedings/seascapes/ index.html; M.N. Pearson, ‘Merchants and States,’ in James D. Tracy, ed., Political Economy of the Merchant Empires, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991, pp. 41–116
John E. Wills, Jr., ‘Maritime Asia, 1500–1800: The Interactive Emergence of European Domination’, American Historical Review, 98, 1, 1993, pp. 83–105
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Daniel Finamore, ed., Maritime History as World History, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, 2002, pp. 149–166.
Similar to the ‘islands’, ports also played a significant role in colonial ocean politics. There is a growing literature on the fate of various port towns in the colonial period which has informed the present study on islands. Broeze, Gateways of Asia, 1997; Banga, Ports and their Hinterland, 1992; Ashley Jackson, War and Empire in Mauritius and the Indian Ocean, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2001.
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A. Aspinall, Cornwallis in Bengal: The Administrative and Judicial Reforms of Lord Cornwallis in Bengal Together with Accounts of the Commercial Expansion of The East India Company, 1786–1793, and of the Foundation of Penang, 1786–1793, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1931, pp. 188–205.
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Home, Public, 23 March 1795, 1, A, Letter from Major A. Kyd to Sir John Shore written on 4 March, NAI. Frost, Convicts and Empire, 1980, discusses the strategic and naval concerns of the Company in this period in the East and the way the Andamans and Australia figured in it. Also see Anirudh Deshpande, ‘The Bombay Marine: Aspects of Maritime History, 1650–1850’, Studies in History, 11, 2, 1995, pp. 281–301
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The EEIC solicited the expert aid of Colonel Kyd who was the Superintendent of the Botanical Gardens in Calcutta, and who had already been conducting experiments on cultivation of opium since the 1780s. He undertook a survey of Andaman’s flora and fauna to assess their commercial possibilities. Home, Public, 20 Feb 1789, NAI; Home, Public, 2 May 1792, 16, NAI; Home Public, 2 May 1792, 16, NAI. Deepak Kumar has shown how the early botanical investigations were of commercial and military, as well as scientific, importance, in ‘volution of Colonial Science in India Natural History and the East India Company’, in John M. Mackenzie, ed., Imperialism and the Natural World, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1990, pp. 51–66.
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Steamers were popular initially only for inland navigation. Amongst the few reasons which slowed down the advance of steam navigation in the Indian Ocean was the prohibitive costs of freight rates and cabin charges, and the absence of natural harbours of sufficient size which the British could exploit effectively. The existing port towns of Bombay, Madras and Calcutta were such that they catered only to limited requirements. Further, the civil engineering works which had to be undertaken in order to overcome the difficulties in building good harbours were still in their infancy in the Subcontinent and the administrative and financial backup required for the purpose was also missing. See F.J.A. Broeze, K.I. McPherson and P.D. Reeves, ‘Engineering and Empire: The Making of Modern Indian Ocean Ports’, in Satish Chandra, ed., Indian Ocean: Explorations in History, Commerce and Politics, Sage Publications, Delhi, 1987, pp. 254–301.
Even Marx saw steam as a force to reckoned with. In an article titled ‘The Future Results of British Rule in India’, published in the New York Herald Tribune on 8 Aug 1853, he remarked, ‘Steam has brought India into regular and rapid communication with Europe, has connected its chief ports with those of the South-Eastern Ocean and has revindicated it from the isolated position which was the prime law of its stagnation’. Cited in P.C. Joshi, ed., Rebellion 1857: A Symposium, People’s Publishing House, New Delhi, 1957, p. 213.
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The sentence of transportation was revived earlier in the century in the 1820s against the backdrop of the Company’s final drive to secure a stable frontier and to offset the financial costs of annexations by making the conquered territories pay for their development. The colony of Amboyna was the first to employ Bengal convicts. In 1816, with the passage of Regulation XIV, transportation to Mauritius and its immediate dependencies and the employment of convicts to work at such a place was legalized and with it transportation of convicts to Mauritius began in earnest. In 1828, Tenasserim, which had been ceded by the King of Ava in 1826, was added to the penal settlements under the British. See T.K. Bannerjee, Background to Indian Criminal Law, Orient Longman, Calcutta, 1963, pp. 91–93.
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Vaidik, A. (2010). Colonizing the Bay. In: Imperial Andamans. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230274884_3
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