Reclaiming the Wild

Abstract

Having annexed the Andamans to British India, the most pressing task ahead was to create a Settlement on the Islands by clearing forests, draining the swamps and erecting dwelling places for the administrators and convicts. Settling a colony such as the Andamans, the officers would soon discover, was a Herculean task. This was because, on one hand, the Andamans was a terra incognito for the British, and on the other, Fort William was minimalist in its instructions regarding the way the colony was to be administered, leaving the Settlement officials to their own devices.¹ More than lack of knowledge or direction, frustrating the Settlement officers’ efforts were their presumptions regarding the ecology and the inhabitants of the Islands. Making the latter acquiesce was not as easy as the officers had supposed. The British had presumed that the Islands’ spatial and societal insularity would not be difficult to overcome and was in fact propitious for the working of the penal settlement. Instead of facilitating, the Islands’ insularity became the chief hurdle in the colonization of the Islands. Fort William did not factor-in the high costs of shipping people, food and other materials to the colony. Securing the penal settlement through the elimination of all indigenous transport and communication networks with the Islands and its resultant dependence on government-sponsored transportation became a costly affair. High mortality rates, morbidity due to disease, spiralling costs of erecting buildings and shelters, and providing for the convicts and the guards on the Islands further added to the expense.