Working an Island Colony: Convict Labour Regime in Colonial Andamans

5 7Working an I s land Colony

IntroductionThe Andaman Islands1 in the mid-nineteenth century were covered with

dense tropical forests, marshes and swamps. The British harboured a forlorndream of developing the place as an agricultural colony but the condition theyfound it in did not allow its use even as a naval station, a port of call, or a con-vict station, without first expending a huge amount of labour on it. The organiza-tion of labour works was thus the foremost task with which the British officialswere confronted.2 The Andamans were a frontier outpost which had been colonizedto safeguard the strategic and naval interests of the Empire in the Indian Ocean.Neither the aborigine population3 nor their labour could be immediately harnessedin the service of the Raj; and, on the other hand, the free settlers or contractorscould not be induced to migrate to the Andamans for working the colony withoutthe British incurring a high cost. Given the nature of circumstances, the modechosen by the British for working the Island colony was the transportation of con-victs. Thus, all the settlers to disembark on Andaman shores were convicts whohad been sentenced to transportation for rebellion, mutiny, sedition, and for crimesof murder and dacoity. Besides alleviating the cost of settling a frontier colony,the transportation of convicts, in the wake of the Revolt of 1857, also played animportant role in temporarily assuaging the problem of overcrowded jails. Conse-quently, in the Andamans, the convicts were the main workforce and they wereemployed in nearly every form of labour – forest work, coolies, boatmen, compoun-ders, scavengers, gardeners, electricians, domestic servants, munshis, and alsoas warders and petty officers. With time, besides the convicts, the Settlement alsoacquired a small non-convict population, comprising of the aborigine Andamanese,Chinese contractors, Indian traders and merchants and contract labourers.4 Thevision of developing an agricultural frontier colony was, however, constantly atloggerheads with the penal requirements of the colony. The British attempts toreconcile this contradiction had an impact on the management of the labourworks and the organization of the workforce. Through a study of these aspects ofthe labour regime in the Andamans this paper would attempt to address historio-graphical issues related to the location of convict labour regimes within the‘global system of forced migration’.

Working an Island ColonyConvict Labour Regimein the Colonial Andamans, 1858–1921

Aparna Vaidik

5 8 L A B O U R M AT T E R S

Management of Labour WorksSince the early nineteenth century, the management of labour works in

colonies that relied on convict labour, such as the Straits Settlement and Mauritius,was nettled by disputes over the issue of labour. As recent studies have shown, itwas mostly the recipient colony and the place of origin of the convicts that div-erged in their views regarding the mode and aim of exploitation of convict labour(Anderson 2000; Yang 2003: 179–208). These pulls and pressures contributed toa situation where the local administrators, in spite of formulating the rules ofmanagement of convicts, never enforced them completely in practice. Similarwas the situation in the Andamans where the management of labour remained acontested domain. However, unlike the Straits and Mauritius, the lines of contesta-tion in the Andamans rested within. Contestation in the official discourse overlabour was primarily regarding the issue of reconciling the long-term aim of dev-eloping an agricultural colony with the immediate one of managing a penalcolony. Different conceptions regarding crime and criminality, and the locationof ‘work’ within such conceptions, led to conflicting ways in which the differentSuperintendents sought to engage the labour force. This conflict was reflected inseveral debates which came up within the Settlement administration regardingthe criterion for classification of the labour force, the superintendence of thelabour force, and lastly, over the introduction of intra-mural labour.

Locking Horns over Classification: 1860s to 1870sTwo sets of criteria for the classification of the workforce came up in a

chronological progression in the Andamans. The first was based on the varyingdegrees of skills possessed by the transported convict, which they had acquiredbefore being deported and which could be harnessed in the service of the state.The other was based on the number of years spent by the convict in exile alongwith his personal conduct. Both criteria unfolded sequentially against the backdropof the increasing technical, infrastructural and institutional capacity of the colonialstate.

Till the time there existed a status quo in the technical and infrastructuralcapacity of the colony and the number of convicts remained limited, the systemcontinued on the lines put into place by Superintendent J.P. Walker in 1858,where most of the convicts did the work of forest-clearing and lived together inmakeshift dwelling places. Walker would issue a ticket-of-leave almost on arrivalto those convicts who brought money with them or grant them one after a shortprobation.5 The ‘self-supporting system’6 helped the state meet the economicexigen-cies of the Settlement. The purpose obviously was to encourage thecultivation of land and to make the convict population self-sustaining.7

The change in the material circumstances of the Settlement and thesubsequent numerical increase in convict numbers made the categorization of theconvicts into different classes imminent. There was approximately a three-foldincrease in the convict population between the years 1862 and 1866, and thenumber of labouring convicts increased nearly six times (see Table 1). The classifi-


cation of convicts was required, according to the Settlement officers, primarily toachieve economy of labour. It was attempted for the first time in the year 1864.

The criterion for classification, however, amplified into a point of debate.Some officials, such as the then Superintendent of the Andamans, Lt. ColonelFord, driven by the need to efficiently utilize labour, focussed solely on theeconomic aspect of the exploitation of convict labour. He wanted the classificationto be based on the proficiency of convicts as artisans, workmen, smiths, basket-makers and thatchers. Skilled labourers (artisans and mechanics) were supposedto be put in the first class, followed by semi-skilled labourers (who were diligentand useful artisans) in the second, and ordinary unskilled labourers in the thirdclass.8 The Superintendent and Execut-ive Engineer were only given the power ofpromotion or reduction from one class to another.9

For the time, the Governor–General extended his approval to Ford’sscheme and even praised it as ‘very good’. However, the premise for the assortmentsuggested by Colonel Ford did not remain uncontested. It was severely criticizedand censured by certain members of the Governor–General’s Council when hisrecommendations came up for discussion. The Council polemicized: ‘Such a classi-fication according to proficiency in certain trades means that a clever scoundrelmay get off with very little penal servitude, in its proper sense, at all. He will atonce be in a far better position than the ignorant convict, who can easily give un-skilled labour in a gang’.10 The fact that the Andamans had been colonized as apenal settlement could not be lost sight of and Ford, therefore, was urged toborrow from the Straits’ rules of convict management, which remained an idealthat continued to elude the administrators in Port Blair.11

The issue of classification remained in abeyance for a few years untilColonel Man once again took it up as the Superintendent in March 1868. Besides

TABLE 1 Increase in the Number of Convicts from the Year 1862 to 1878

Year Total number of Convicts

On Sep 1862 2173* (labouring 1,608, self-supporting 242)

At the end of 1865 3854†

On Oct 1866 6469‡

On March 1867 6982¤ (labouring 6,483, self-supporting 459)

On Jan 1870 7498+

On Jan 1871 7546×

On June 1874 7820✡

At the end of 1877–78 9579**

Sources: * Home, Public, 28 November 1862, 71, A, NAI.† Home, Public, 20 December 1865, 37–38, A, NAI.‡ Home, Public, February 1867, Proceedings Volume, A, NAI.¤ Home, Public, July 1867, 21–22, A, NAI.+ Home, Public, 19 March 1870, 141–43, A, NAI.× Home, Public, 8 April 1871, 67–68, A, NAI.✡ Home, Port Blair, August 1874, 75, A, NAI.

** Annual Report for the year 1878–79, Home, Port Blair, March 1880, 25–27, NAI.


being critical of the prevalent system of classification, Colonel Man also objectedto the fact that the convict was eligible for any employment on his arrival in theAndamans without being required to pass through a fixed probationary period‘to prove his title to reward’.12 The classification of convicts that Colonel Manproposed was based on the number of years that a convict had spent on theIslands. And, more importantly, promotion to the first class was to come as areward for good personal conduct, that is, disciplined behaviour and hard work,and not as a matter of course.13

Based on his experience in the Straits, Man believed that, unless the con-vict had spent nearly eleven years in the lower grades, he should not be promotedto the self-supporter grade (first class, where the convict got a ticket-of-leave).The idea was to condense the harshest punishment in the early years of the con-vict’s life in transportation, when the memory of his native life and criminal actwas most vivid in his mind. After some years, a relaxation and grant of indulgenceswas proposed, although only as a result of his good conduct. This, it was felt,would offer an opportunity to the convict to reform as he could hope for lessmisery and retrieve some measure of the social life that he left behind. Further, hebelieved that reformation was possible only through enforcing a regulated scaleof rewards for good behaviour and punishments for misconduct and mis-demeanour.14

Finally, Colonel Man’s scheme of a six-fold classification along the linesof the Straits Settlement Rules with some modification was accepted by the Govern-ment of India and incorporated under the Act V of 1871.15 The rules for classifi-cation were further modified and improved following the report of J.S. Campbellin 1874, which was also based on the number of years that a convict spent in theSettlement and his personal conduct, and no ticket-of-leave was given until theconvict had been a resident for twelve years, a period which was subsequentlyreduced to ten years.16 The grades or classes in which the convicts were placedwere also differentiated by addition or withholding of some circumstances whichaggravated or alleviated the pain of the convicts. Cooked food or dry rations,clothing, association with others and the light work that the convict was put to,were the various indices of indulgences granted in an increasing measure as theconvicts rose from the lower grades into higher ones. While the convicts wereorganized into different classes, there was no attempt to classify the differentlabour works on the Settlement as commensurate with each grade. As a result,while the six-fold classification rested on a penal principle, in its working it didnot always go towards serving that end, and the convicts continued to be assignedlabour works irrespective of their class.17

Wrestling for Control: 1870s to 1880sSuperintendence of the labour force, that is, control over the allocation

and the management of the labour works, was the lynchpin of the administrationin the Andamans. The Public Works Department and the Superintendent of theSettlement represented the opposing sides in this conflict, trying to gain control


over the labour force. Interestingly, both the sparring sides pitched their argumenton the urgent need to ‘economize labour’ as a justification for extending theircontrol over it. The argument on either side was that labour was the most importantresource on the Islands and that it shared an inverse relationship with the financialwelfare of the colony. Over-exploitation of the convict workforce invariablyresulted in a high death-rate. This, in turn, necessitated the transportation of agreater number of convicts to the colony to make up for lost numbers. And anincrease in the numerical strength of convicts meant a proportionate increase ingovernment expense over their maintenance. Therefore, it was believed that labourresources had to be conserved and exploited judiciously (see Table 2 for mainten-ance cost of convicts in the Andamans).

Until 1880, most of the labour was employed under the Executive Engineerin the Public Works Department, independent of the Superintendent of the Settle-ment (Table 3).18 The Marine, Medical, Forest and Commissariat departmentsemployed the rest of the convicts (Table 7).19 Each department employed convictsof different grades as petty officers, artificers or coolies and these convicts wereworked on over ten different stations in the Settlement. The convicts who wereemployed in manufacturing various articles of daily utility worked in workshopsestablished at various points in Port Blair.20 The requisitioning of labour by thevarious departments through their respective officers was done without keepingan account of value of labour supplied21 and, since the PWD looked after thelabour corps, the Superintendent had no control over it. This proved very expensiveto the Settlement because for any work that the Superintendent wished to getdone, he had to pay the PWD.22 Settlement officers, on grounds of economy,began to argue for enhancing the Superintendent’s powers in the working oflabour. They felt that ‘much of the available labour has been fritted away, especial-ly by the Department of Public Works, which, working under its own officersindependently of the Superintendent, has been a very great source of expenseboth in money and convict-labour’.23

D.M. Stewart, Superintendent in the early 1870s, came up with a planto economize on the expenses of labour. Under his plan, a system of inter-depart-mental payments, in which convict labourers and workmen were to be suppliedto various departments in return for cash payments, was to be introduced. He felt

TABLE 2 Average Net Cost per Prisoners in Rupees

Total 1883 1899 1900 1901 1902 1903

India 48 46 53 54 50 51

Andamans 64 84 99 87 91 93

Madras 70

Coorg 67

Assam 83

Source: Home, Port Blair, July 1906, 38–40, A, NAI.


that the labour that was made use of without any payment was ‘not economizedand employed in the most uneconomical way’. He grumbled: ‘Labour which ishad for the asking, is not economized and employed in the most unprofitableway, moreover, the tendency is to lighten labour, and the pressure put upondepartmental officers to increase the number of hands with the view of lesseningthe task of those employed on it becomes irresistible’.24

Stewart felt that the motive of the various departments, at this time, wasonly to display as much progress as possible, irrespective of the cost. However,with the system of inter-departmental payments, the supervising officers woulddevelop a direct interest in seeing that they all got their money’s worth for thecash they expended. The PWD attempted to thwart the move on the principlethat Port Blair was not ‘conducted on commercial and self-supporting principleslike the Postal and Telegraph Department’.25 The Governor–General’s Councilwas also not immediately open to the idea of introducing a system of inter-departmental cash payments, which it described as ‘cumbersome’. A.P. Howell,Under-Secretary to the Government of India, suggested that the method used forregulating the charge of convict labour in India be extended to Port Blair, where,in relation to the other departments the convict department stood in the positionof a contractor. The value of the convict labour desired by other departments wasascertained as if it had been performed by the contractors of hired labour andwas accordingly charged for by book debit.26 The Military Department was alsonot in favour of introducing inter-departmental cash payments. It preferred that‘a system of book credit and debit should be instituted, the Superintendent checkingthe indents for labour in communication with the heads of the various departments,and the value of convict labour being fixed at 4 annas per diem’.27

The main objective of the Settlement officers was to curtail the hold ofthe PWD over the labour of the convicts and the system of payments was asecondary issue. They stuck to their guns and the control of PWD over labourwas finally abolished in 1880.28 Thereafter, all convict labour employed by theseveral departments was charged to those departments by an invoice. Departmentalofficers were expected to apply to the Settlement officers for the services of theconvicts, stating the number required and the purpose of their requirement.29

TABLE 3 Distribution of Labour to the Departments in December 1874

Department Number of Convicts

Commissariat 147

Marine 416

Medical 169

Public Works 881

Forest 111

On Settlement Works 3914

Total 5638

Source: Home, Port Blair, February 1875, 12, A, NAI.


This change was upheld as an ‘unqualified success and the Superintendent assuredthat ‘the works have been carried on with as much vigour as heretofore’.30

On receiving the charge of labour works the rules for the employment oflabour in transportation were drawn up. The convicts were not to be worked forover nine hours, whistles would sound the commencement and the ending ofwork, medical opinion was sought for the convicts unable to perform ‘full tasks’,the grant or employment of convict labour for private purposes was prohibited(except on payment to the Government at the authorized rates), certain classes ofconvicts were also made eligible for domestic employment, and the ArtificerCorps was also put on a firmer footing.31 However, the problem of economy inthe use of labour remained far from resolved.

Introducing Intra-Mural Labour: 1890s to 1910sWell into the 1890s, the twin problems of equitable distribution of labour

and its judicious use remained a grey area for the administration. While therewas periodical promotion of convicts from class to class, of which a record wasduly kept, there was little information on the kind of labour on which the convictwas employed while he was in a particular class. Some convicts, it was believed,by currying favour with the petty officers, escaped being employed on heavylabour irrespective of the class they belonged to. The uneasiness regarding thecharacter of labour extraction led to the opening of the issue once again in 1890with the visit of the Lyall and Lethbridge Committee which came to review theworking of the penal settlement. Amongst other suggestions, it recommended theintroduction of intra-mural labour for a period of eighteen months, starting fromthe day the convict disembarked on the Andamans’ shores.32 For this purpose a‘Cellular Jail’ began to be built in the year 1892–93.33

The labour regime, the daily rhythm of the convict’s life and the kinds ofwork that he was assigned inside the Jail were to be completely different fromwhat was there in the Settlement.34 The prisoners were ‘fed in their cells, the foodbeing passed in through trap-doors provided for the purpose’.35 Only latrine andbathing parades were conducted in association. The convicts were engaged incleaning wheat, grinding wheat, dal and kopra, pounding coir and making nets.The grinding of kopra was done with the help of Donaldson’s patent mill, a smalliron machine that worked on the principle of the common sugar mill. The machinewas fixed outside the cell and was operated by a crank turned by the prisonerinside. The grinding work was extremely severe and disliked immensely by theconvicts.36 Only a few prisoners were employed in coir-pounding, as the particlesof husk rendered the cell quite stuffy. With time, worksheds were erected in theyards situated between the radiating arms of the Jail for the main body of theconvicts to work in association. This arrangement was adopted because it wasfound impossible to work a large body of convicts entirely in cells.37 The convictswere awarded a maximum of two marks a day for good conduct and work. Thetotal marks earned by the convict could shorten his stay in the Jail by twenty-three days. And a convict was to be released from the jail after six months only


if his conduct was good, otherwise the administration had the authority to detainhim further.38

Life in the Jail, once it became operational, was described by Superintend-ent R.C. Temple thus:

We commence by placing our newly-arrived convict in the Cellular Jail, by wayof breaking him to harness. Here all is discipline. There is no hard work. It isdiscipline, the sternest of discipline, from morning till night – hard, rigid, uncom-promising. We oblige him to bend his rebellious nature to the yoke for sixmonths at least. He remains in his cell all day and all night. . . . The irksomenessof the discipline is shown in his action at exercise. It is not exciting exerciseexactly, as he has to walk round and round the ring.39

Through the introduction of intra-mural labour the Committee was notreally aiming at developing the colony, or subsidizing the cost of convict upkeep,or helping the convict to become self-sufficient. Its main focus was on discipliningthe convict and subjecting him to a gruelling daily routine.40 The time that hespent in the Jail was to be a reminder to him for the rest of his stay on theAndamans that the extra-mural life that he leads was indeed a privilege. TheLyall and Lethbridge Committee’s recommendations were underpinned by theshift in colonial penology, which by the 1880s had come to view extra-murallabour as an indulgence. Intra-mural labour was being seen as more productiveand punitive as it enabled greater regulation of labour time and proffered thepossibility of developing a more discriminatory scale of punishment (Amold 1994:140–78; Singha 1998; Swaminathan 1995: 77–100; Wiener 1990; Yang 1987:29–45; and Crime and Criminality, 1985). Even the physical conditions of theIslands had by this time undergone a significant change, thereby lessening theneed for extra-mural labour. The Andamans now boasted of fairly well-developedinfrastructural capacity, with official residences, convict barracks, waterworks,draining, a signalling system and the telegraph. Further, the commercial potentialof its forests was also beginning to be realized. These developments opened upthe Andamans as a place which was attractive to various kinds of contract wage-labour, which in time would prove an effective alternative to convict labour.However, notwithstanding the shift in favour of intra-mural labour, the need forextra-mural labour could not be done away with. The latter remained the mainstayof the Settlement, answering to the financial and developmental needs of theisland colony.

The original purpose of achieving economy, equity and judiciousness inthe use of labour remained unanswered even with the coming up of the CellularJail. This problem lasted well into the twentieth century. The Government ofIndia, at this juncture, opined that ‘unless definite principles of this kind areobserved, it seems humanely impossible to avoid injustice through an inequitabledistribution of labour’.41 Finally, these debates and controversy over the efficiencyof convict labour led to talks over the abolition of the penal settlement, whichwas attempted quite unsuccessfully in the early 1920s.


Assignment of Labour WorksConvicts in the Andamans were not a homogeneous lot of criminals but

came from a wide cross-section of society, ranging from rajas, royal andgovernment officials to city people, land owners, peasants and artisans; and theyalso belonged to different parts of the Indian Empire, had varied belief systems,languages and cultural capital. The system of classification in the Andamans, asdetailed above, took some time to evolve but even after its introduction, convictsfrom the different classes could be worked together on the same kind of labourwork. Given the variegated character of the workforce and the internal differencesin the mode of working the islands, how were the convicts actually put to work?If not penal, what were the criteria used by the officials to assign labour work toa particular convict? How could the lack of homogeneity amongst the convictsbe dealt with and used to the advantage of the colony? What would a systemwhich took care of all the divergent needs of the colony and its workforce belike? The system that was put into place by the Settlement officials rested on theuse of various non-penal and informal criteria to work the convicts. These criteriaranged from literacy, race, gender, skill to the time-period of the sentence oftransportation of the convicts. What was unique about the situation was thatthese criteria were never written down in the Settlement reports or codified in theofficial manuals. These criteria were a product of the structural logic of theisland colony, an attempt to reconcile the long-term goal of creating an agriculturalcolony with its penal requirements; the central government directives with localimperatives; and it also helped in resolving the divergent personal dispositions ofthe officials. The following is an examination of the system of assignment oflabour works in the Andamans.

The Convict BabuThe literate convict was prized in the Settlement since they were used as

clerks, babus and munshis. Even the convicts debarred from transportation owingto the restrictions regarding age and health were, if literate, sent to the Andamansas clerical staff.42 While the convict’s erstwhile social or caste status did notprivilege the convicts in any way and neither was it a safeguard against mal-treatment, the ability of some convicts to read and write earned them a totallydifferent treatment in the colony. For instance many of the convicts were Nawabs,Zamindars, Muftis, Qazis, Deputy Collectors, Munsif, and Sadr, but they couldnot use their position to bargain for concessions in the Settlement. Moreover,there was no caste specialization of labour work as such, except for cooking andcleaning, whereby Brahmins were employed as cooks and the ones from thescavenging castes as cleaners. Mohammad Zafar Thanesari, in his memoir, anec-dotally recounts the fate of two convicts, one a local Indian Raja and the other anEnglish-educated Indian, who were brought to the Islands at the same time butreceived completely different treatment. The Raja in question was the ruler ofJagannath Puri. According to Thanesari, because of his dark skin, the Raja hadto eat with ‘chude chamar’, and had to perform hard labour. Later, because of


his weak constitution, the Raja was made to grind wheat and soon met a tragicend (Thanesari, Kalapani, p. 67).43 At the time the Raja of Puri arrived in theSettlement, another Indian, ‘who had a European name and wore coat and trouserscame to the Andamans from Awadh. He was given food like the Europeans, agood house, a bed and all other comforts. He did not have to perform any hardlabour and instead became a clerk’. Thanesari was brought to tears at the sightof this discrimination. A bit hypocritical in his recounting, Thanesari’s own posi-tion was similar to the man from Awadh, as he had been appointed the ChiefMunshi in the office of the Superintendent, given a house and a servant for free,within a few days of his arrival in the Settlement because of being literate. Thane-sari’s account is important in understanding the significance of the literacy of theconvict in the working of the administration and the labour work that the convictwas assigned.

Race and Labour SpecializationsThe race of the convict was also an important denominator in the assign-

ment of labour works. Different racial stereotypes with regard to a particularrace’s proficiency in specific labour works had got sedimented in the British offi-cial thinking. Besides the Indian convicts, who were generally seen as an undiffer-entiated racial group, there were the Burmese and the Europeans, who madetheir presence felt in the Andamans.44 The transportation of the Burmese fromRangoon and Moulmein, and thereafter from the Tennaserim and Martaban pro-vinces, was sanctioned in response to the demands for a larger labour force in theAndamans by the Government in November 1859.45 The various provinces inIndia where the Burmese convicts were transported, until the coming up of theSettlement in the Andamans, were also eager to be relieved of maintaining them.46

They were believed to be important for the Settlement as they ‘thoroughlyunderstood timber business’ and were seen as ‘capable of teaching the arts offelling, dragging, hoisting and cutting out timber – matters which to the uninitiatedare of great difficulty though apparently easy’.47 In the British official opinion,the Burmese formed an ‘efficient’ labour force. Seen as ‘capital workmen’, theywere much in demand notwithstanding their distinctive reputation of being givento drinking and being exceptionally unruly.48 Many amongst them were alsoexcellent seafarers and, therefore, believed to be responsible for many a case ofescape.49 The transportation of the Burmese convicts was stepped up wheneverthe need for skilled labour for undertaking the developmental works around theSettlement came up.50

As early as September 1858, eight European convicts were granted leavefrom the Alipore Jail in Bengal for the remainder of their term, on the conditionthat ‘they proceed to the Andamans to perform any duty that the Superintendentof Port Blair may require of them’.51 The European convicts were generally seento be interested in being sent to the Andamans as ticket-of-leave prisoners as theSettlement gave them greater freedom than being confined in a jail.52 TheSettlement was also keen on receiving European convicts because there was a


requirement of petty officers and other clerical staff on the Islands.53 They weregranted a ticket-of-leave on their arrival in the Andamans54 and permission wasalso granted to the families of the European or the Eurasian convicts to jointhem.55

European convicts, although prized as racially superior petty officers,were also known to take advantage of their position. For instance, in September1858, a European overseer called Richardson was charged with the misappro-priation of commissariat articles and rations. He used to put his own dead fowlsinto the government hen-coop and extract a corresponding number of live onesand send them to his wife in Moulmein.56 A similar incident in 1868 broughtmatters to a head and initiated a debate regarding the inexpediency of sendingEuropean convicts to the Andamans. A European prisoner, G.J. Scott, was chargedwith embezzlement and using the misappropriated sums to buy his favouritefemale convicts clothing and jewellery.57 With time, efforts were made to putEuropean convicts on the same foothold as native convicts. The J.S. CampbellReport suggested that the European convicts in the Settlement be subject to allthe rules applicable to the native convicts of their class. In case, they had beennoted for their good behaviour in goal previous to their arrival on the Andamans,it was to be counted towards eligibility for indulgences.58 But in spite of theserecommendations racial differentiation remained an important denominator inthe assignment of labour works.

Temporality of Labour ObligationsIn the labour regime of the Andamans one of the fundamental points of

differentiation of the workforce was the temporality of the labour obligation59 –for life or for a term. In principle, the sentence of transportation was for life;however, convicts sentenced to ‘term transportation’, ranging from three to sevenyears, were also sent.60 The temporality of the sentence to which the convictswere subjected impinged on their status within the labour regime.

Most term-convicts served as petty officers. And while many were alsoemployed in labour works around the Settlement – much like the life-convicts –there existed a stark difference in their status within the labour regime, and thelegal and the economic compulsions with which they were faced. That a term-convict could return home meant that he did not completely severe ties with hissociety and community. Such a convict could not be categorized as ‘sociallydead’, as he, unlike the life convict, was not compelled to rebuild his life in theAndamans. Thus, issues of reform, rehabilitation and integration of the convictinto the new life were not paramount for the term-convict. He was expected tofulfill his sentence and return to the life back in his homeland. An efficient dischar-ging of his duties could also earn him extra marks, which went towards the remi-ssion of his sentence, expediting his return. This made the status of the term-convict ‘free/unbound’ in comparison to the life-convict.

Term transportation was initially begun to relieve overcrowding in Indianjails, but after some years it was the economic imperative which determined its


continued utility. The development of the colony with time had necessitated greaterlabour inputs and also the employment of labour in varied capacities. The labourrequirement could either be met with the greater exploitation of the existentlabour force or else by augmenting their numbers or by opening the Settlement tonon-convict labour. The increase in the number of the convicts, especially termconvicts, was seen as the safest and the most cost-effective option.61 Officials inIndia, however, saw the presence of term-convicts as severely undermining penaldiscipline in the Andamans as the returnee convicts gave glowing accounts oftheir life in the Andamans. This diminished the deterrent value of the sentence oftransportation as a punishment. Consequently, term transportation wascontinuously subjected to criticism and exertions were made for its abolition.

Notwithstanding the repeated censure, term transportation was resortedto for most part of the Andamans’ penal history. In order to make term transporta-tion more digestible to the high officials in India, its continued use was justifiedon penal grounds. It was contended that it contributed to the security of theregime by serving as a counterbalance to the life-convicts. The Settlement officersargued that the lifers ‘could not be placed in a position of trust’. The reason beingthat the life-convict, as he had no hope of release, was believed to possess a des-perate character as compared to a term-convict.62 The term transportation thereforeanswered the ‘object of supplying reliable men to act as petty officers’.63 It wasironical, though, that the term-convicts could not serve as domestic servants astheir disposition was considered unreliable for the purpose.64 Life-convicts werepreferred over the term-convicts because the former were seen as having committeda crime in a moment of passion and extreme provocation, and therefore weredistinguished from others who were habitual thieves and criminals.

A Gendered Labour ForceIn the Andamans the presence of convict women was primarily defined

by a need for conjugal partners.65 As a result, there was a greater emphasis ontheir utility as sexual partners than on their reproductive and productive capacities.The reproductive capacity of female convicts was of limited consequence for thecolonial state because the labour regime in the Andamans fundamentally dependedon the importation of the labour force instead of local regeneration. Any substantialincrease in the non-productive child population had the potential of threateningthe survival of the precarious economic infrastructure of the island colony. Thedomestication of convicts to provide stability and permanency to the male labourforce was definitely one of the avowed aims and the production of progeny wasa less-desired by-product.66 As an institution, the household unit was supposed tofulfill several functions simultaneously – it was a mode of regulating sexualunion; controlling and ordering convict pleasure and desire; and imparting stabilityto the convict workforce. Thus, besides being a social unit it was also an economicand labouring unit aiming at autarchy (Vaidik 2006).

Further, there was a subordination of the productive capacity of the femaleconvicts as well. Women were not seen as contributing to the labour pool that


was in demand on the Islands. Physically strenuous work of clearing the junglesand draining the swamps or agricultural labour in the self-supporting villageswas seen as out of the purview of the labour that the females could undertake.The female convicts were mostly employed in cotton growing, cotton weaving,and blanket weaving.67 There was ‘a large local trade in cloth of sorts’, besideswhich they also made ‘all the clothing for the 1300 convicts’.68 The wives of theself-supporters were mostly engaged in looking after the household. For officials,such work did not substantially reduce the cost of running the Settlement, aperception that depreciated the demand of convict women as a labour source. AsDeborah Oxley (1996: 227) has rightly pointed out, in work ‘skill was a categoryconstructed according to political and economic power, rather than some objectiveand absolute proficiency’. The informal training that a woman got in the variousskills while staying at home, tending the hearth, raising the children, assistingher family members in the fields, or in weaving, basket-making and variousother caste-based economic activities and subsistence crafts had no recognitionor value in this scheme of things.69 The state subscribing to the notions of themarket economy derecognized the worth of the female labourer, and especiallythat of the convict women, as a ‘potential worker’. The sexual labour that theyperformed was seen as the sum total of the skill they possessed, obliterating thevalue of other skills they had.

The Dexterous DelinquentThe need for skilled labour was indefatigable in the Settlement. In the

initial days, several suggestions were made for hiring volunteer convict artisansfrom the Bengal prisons or from the Straits Settlement, or hiring a free gang fromCalcutta.70 Some artificers were finally obtained from Moulmein and a fewcarpenters and blacksmiths from Calcutta.71 However, free labour, in comparisonto convict labour, had to be remunerated at very high rates. Therefore, there wasalways a huge concern regarding making savings on the expenditure on skilledlabour. Consequently, Colonel Man, on his accession as the Superintendent, inthe early 1870s, undertook the organization of a convict Artificer Corps as analternative to the costly skilled free labour ‘for the construction of Public Worksand for the best utilization of skilled labour’.72 The Artificers were dividedaccording to their skills into four classes, and received gratuities besides theirsettlement allowance.73 All the convicts who formed a part of the Artificer Corpswere subjected to the rules of the class that they otherwise belonged to. Thecharge of the corps rested with the Superintendent. Convict foreman (Jemadars),petty officers and Tindals were selected out of the artificer corps to supervise thework of the gangs of the labouring convicts in the corps. The convicts and firstand second class workmen who belonged to the corps received marks for goodbehaviour and industrious work.74 The artificers also had the privilege to finishwork at 4 o’clock while the rest of the convicts worked until 6 o’clock.75 Accordingto Colonel Man, working in the Artificer Corps would help in the rehabilitationof convicts, that is, ‘in the case of prisoners stimulated to industry by reward, the


progress in skill is often very remarkable; and when they are under sentence forlife, they soon amply repay the pains and cost of teaching them trades’.76

Non-Convict LabourAnother crucial feature of the labour regime of the Andamans was that it

also employed non-convict labour, which provided an important reservoir ofskilled labour and was ‘vital for the economic and social health of the islandcolony’.77 For instance, the economy of the local bazaar depended heavily on thepresence of the free merchants who ensured a regular supply of goods from Calcuttaand Rangoon. Except for the aborigine Andamanese, all free persons visiting,residing, trading or carrying out any commercial activity in the Settlement hadto obtain a license and had to follow strict rules and regulations.78

The AndamaneseOnce friendly relations were established with the Andamanese they were

also drawn into the labour regime of the Settlement.79 The engagement of theAndamanese in different kinds of works in and around the Settlement had itsutilitarian advantages but the British also harboured a strong ideological purposein putting the Andamanese to work. It was a mode of ‘civilizing’ the ‘indolentand lazy savage’.80 One of the most important indices of civilization accordingto the British was possessing the value of labour, and it was this value that theBritish were attempting to instill in the Andamanese. It was believed that labourwould help them to ‘develop capabilities which in the progress and extension ofthe colony will be of highest value’.81 And this value for labour was instilledthrough two methods, one direct and the other indirect. The direct method wasone of example, where the Andamanese would pick up the ‘habit’ of labour as aresult of association with the British. As one official suggested: ‘One of the simplestand easiest methods, in my opinion, is to encourage them to live amongst us ascivilized beings when by their observation of our usages in labor, the habits oflife, they will in time learn the advantages of industry’.82 The indirect methodwas of making them appreciate the value of money and allowing them to getaddicted to tobacco. The desire for money and tobacco, it was hoped, wouldmake them labour.83 Other than small tasks such as cutting bamboos and workingthem into mats, the Andamanese would also collect turtle shells, dugong carcassesand honey84 and give them to the British. They also started collecting Ledu shells(Turbo Obarius), which had some commercial value owing to its mother-o’-pearl. Its trial shipments were sent to Colombo and Germany.85

The major form in which the Andamanese served the British was astrackers, guides and pilots. They also accompanied the Settlement officers onvarious expeditions and reconnaissance parties which went all over the Andamans,especially the North Andamans. They were crucial in the British efforts to map,survey and gain knowledge of the Islands, which helped the British to draw outplans for the colonization of the interiors of the islands.86 By 1865, the Andamanese


also began to be used to capture the runaway convicts and provide intelligenceabout intended escapes.87 In June 1869, the then Superintendent organized aparty of eleven Andamanese boys who assisted the convict police peons inapprehending runaways.88 The census enumeration of the number of Andamaneseinhabiting the Islands was another task in which the Andamanese assisted theBritish.89 Since the Andamanese did not know how to count the officials deviseda novel method – coloured beads were given to the Andamanese of four distinctcolours for men, women, boys, and girls; and ‘he was to transfer from the full tothe empty bag a bead, colour by colour, for each person he met’. The experimentmet only with partial success, nevertheless the British were able to complete theenumeration with considerable success.

Contract Labour in the ForestInitially in the 1860s, a ‘free gang’ was hired for a fixed period and on

lower wages to work the forests and to teach some of the convicts ‘to becometolerably skilled workmen when their own services may be dispensed with’.90

The importation of labourers categorized as ‘free’ reflected the official preferencefor contract labour over indentured labour. What the officials understood by‘free’ labour was labour which was engaged through a civil contract. At thishistorical juncture, the British officials were opposed to extending the indenturesystem to the Andamans. They were of the opinion that if suitable wages wereoffered and proper accommodation was provided there would be ‘no seriousdifficulty in securing an adequate supply of free labour from Madras’. Theengagement of the labour, therefore, was to be a matter of civil contract, whichwas enforceable under section 492 of the Indian Penal Code.91 Under the contract,the labourer was ‘free not only in the sense that the recruitment of the coolie andhis transport should be restricted; but also in the sense that he should be placedunder no penal contract, so that his freedom of movement backwards and forwards. . . might not be interfered with’.

The forest work, nevertheless, continued to be done mostly by a smallestablishment of convict jemadars and tindals who served in the place of rangersand foresters.92 By the 1910s there was a clear shift in the government’s policy93

and it was decided to develop the forests of the North and the Middle AndamanIslands with the help of ‘imported labour’.94 Finally, 400 coolies, mostly ‘Mundas’,were recruited in Ranchi on an agreement of six months, and some were alsoobtained from Burma. They were engaged for clearing sites, filling up swamps,constructing a jetty, and building huts and embankments (Jacob 1921). Theywere employed on a ‘temporary cultivating license’ by the Forest Department fortwo hundred days in a year.95 However, there was a small catch in the demandfor non-convict labour. The importation of labourers who came to the Andamanson a voluntary basis was not an easy task. In the early decades of the twentiethcentury, there was only one steamer plying to the Andamans, and additionalmeans of transport had to be organized for the scheme. Moreover, there was no


recruiting system on which the Settlement officials could rely on and there wasalways the fear of epidemics and other unforeseen circumstances pushing up thecost of this project.96

The Chinese Contractor and His GangMost of the non-convict workers were Chinese who had been initially

engaged by Captain J.C. Haughton to collect edible birds’ nests.97 Thereafter,the Chinese were recruited as contractors for forest work, and they in turn employed‘Chinamen’ as carpenters and smiths. Chinese labour was an important resourceon the Islands as the Artificer Corps had no trained carpenters and found ‘iteasier to do their work by contracts, which are taken by the Chinese, who paytheir fellow countrymen from Rs 1–12 to Rs 2 a day wages’.98 However, Chineselabour did not come cheap to the Settlement. Convict labour was valued at 4annas a day and free labour was much higher, with Chinese carpenters getting asmuch as Rs 2 a day.99 The Chinamen were also involved in various kinds ofactivities outlawed by the penal administration. Opium ‘smuggling’ was theirforte and the Superintendent once complained to the Chief Commissioner of BritishBurma that he had to allow private trade in opium for otherwise Chinese labourerswould leave the place. He further fumed, ‘gambling too, on their part, I have hadto wink at’. The reason he had to put up with these excesses was that the labourof the Chinese workmen as smiths and carpenters was crucial for the rapid con-struction of barracks. And the Central government was very keen to see thespeedy completion. So the Superintendent was left with the choice of either ‘lettingthem alone in this matter, or losing them’.100

Conclusion: The Geography of LabourThe past two decades have seen the coming together of convict studies

and labour history. This union has given rise to a new stream of historiography– convict labour history. This burgeoning historiographical field has altered theway the history of penal settlements and convict transportation have been hithertostudied, which are now being viewed as part of the ‘global system of forcedmigration’ (Table 4; Yang 2003; Northrup 2003; Eltis 2002; Sen 2000; Kent andTownsend 2000; Nicholas 1998; Nicholas and Shergold 1988). The underlyingassumption of this framework is that it sees the transported convict as essentiallyanother category of ‘worker’ and not simply as a dispossessed individual (Nicholas1988; Kent and Townsend 2002). These revisionist historical works, inspired ingreat measure by the debates on free and unfree labour (Steinfeld 1991, 1999 and1997; Northrup 2003; Eltis 2003; Gyan Prakash 1990) seek to challenge andquestion the accepted wisdom that convict labour systems were unremittinglycoercive unfree labour systems lacking a negotiated character; and that convictlabour was fundamentally an inefficient form of labour. They have sought tohighlight the ‘negotiated’ and ‘efficient’ nature of convict labour systems by posi-tioning them within the global system of forced migration.

Located within the global system of forced migration (see Table 4), the


Andamans appear like another case study which bears out the conclusions ofrevisionist historiography.101 It is certainly true that while the general tenor ofthe labour regime, by virtue of being a penal colony, was extremely demandingand repressive in the Andamans, it also displayed elements that make itscategorization as an uncommonly coercive labour regime quite difficult. Itsubjected the convicts to a high degree of brutality and harshness and in this itappeared much closer to slavery than, perhaps, indenture or contract labour.Nevertheless, the coercive nature of its labour regime, much like the convictlabour regimes in other parts of the world, did not obliterate the process ofnegotiation.

However, a case study of the Andamans resists a neat categorizationinto the global system of forced migration on two counts. The first is the islandicgeography of the Andamans which had an important role to play in the manage-ment and assignment of labour. The geographical location of the island colonywas such that it imposed administrative isolation and subjected the colony tofinancial constraints. The Andamans, unlike a plantation colony, was not a colonythat was enriching the colonial coffers. It was a frontier outpost, with high shippingcosts, no involvement in the international European trade, effectively no domesticmarket and possessing limited technical and infrastructural capacity. Also, theAndamans, unlike the plantation colonies, had no markets and no export enclavesto which it could sent its produce. On the other hand, the political economy ofthe island colony at the time of the establishment of the Settlement necessitatedexpending a huge amount of labour.102 This made the state resort to convict-labour instead of contract wage-labour as the workers had to be subjected to a

TABLE 4 Comparative Table of Trans-Continental Convict Transportation, 1787–1920

Period Origin Destination Flow

1787–1825 India Sumatra (Bencoolen) 4,000–6,000

1788–1840 Britain New South Wales 80,000

1790–1860 India Straits Settlements 15,000

1801–1852 Britain Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) 67,000–69,0001815–1837 India Mauritius 8001820–1920 European Siberia 916,000 (1823–28),

Russia 1,000,000 (1870–1920)1824–1863 Britain Bermuda 9,0001842–1875 Britain Gibraltar 9,0001846–1850 Britain New South Wales, Victoria 3,0001847–1856 Hong Kong Straits Settlements 94 (1864)1849–1873 Ceylon Malacca 1,000–1,5001850–1868 Britain Western Australia 9,7001854–1920 France French Guinea (Cayenne) 3,780 (1855), 6,465 (1911)1858–1920 India Andaman Islands 11,373 (1906–18)

14,000 (maximum),1865–1897 France New Caledonia 24,000, 18,078 (1852–67),

3,656(1867–79)

Source: Nicholas and Shergold (1988: 28–29, 30).


high degree of coercion in order to make them labour in a place like the Andamans.In the Andamans, the case was not one of the non-availability of wage contractlabour but of the non-availability of labour for the kind of work that needed to bedone.103 The working conditions were so adverse that inspite of the presence ofnearly 8,000 convicts the land cleared in the first six years was not more than100 acres. All these factors together exerted immense financial strains on thecolony and the organization of the labour within it. The internal dissensions withregard to the management of labour works and the use of informal non-penalcriteria in the assignment of labour works reflect the above constraints.

The second issue relates to the ‘efficiency’ of convict labour. Revisionisthistoriography sees convict labour as efficient essentially because of the asymmetrybetween the crimes of the convicts and the labour works on which they wereemployed in the colony. This has been upheld as evidence of the labour market inthe recipient colony being ‘efficient’. They describe efficiency as ‘right workerfor the right job’. The revisionist historiography substantiates this argument byshowing that the convicts were engaged in jobs commensurate to ones they wereemployed in before their arrival in New South Wales. On this basis they concludethat ‘the allocation of convict labour was not a lottery’. In the Andamans, muchlike in New South Wales, there was a very clear asymmetry between the crimeand the labour work to which the convict was assigned, and also the basis oflabour assignment was not necessarily penal. However, unlike New South Wales,the assigned labour work was not always based on the skills that the convictsbrought with them. At times the skill of the convict was commensurate with thejob held by him in the Settlement but this was not always the case. Moreover, theBritish wished to develop the Andamans as an agricultural colony but only halfof the convicts who arrived on the Islands were from agricultural castes and veryfew were actually engaged in agriculture after their arrival (see Tables 5, 6 and7). Therefore, the convict labour force cannot be categorized as ‘efficient’ basedon the above criterion; however, neither was it ‘inefficient’ in the manner hithertounderstood. Efficiency and inefficiency were merely categories deployed by theofficials to demarcate one form of labour from another without any assessmentof their intrinsic value.

In stressing the contested and variegated character of the labour regimein the Andamans the present study steps away from the works of revisionisthistorians of Australian convict history such as Clare Anderson, Anand Yang andSatadru Sen. Unlike them, it does not see the labour regime as fulfilling only onemotive of either developing the colony or of making the convict into a loyalsubject (Nicholas 1988; Duffield and Bradley 1997; Oxley 1996; McDonald andShlomowitz 1996; Rude 1978; Sandhu 1969; Sen 2000; Anderson 2000). Thisarticle has attempted to show that the transported convict was not simply justanother category of migrant worker who was part of the ‘global system of forcedmigration’, helping in developing the incipient colonies in the far-flung parts ofthe Empire. Nor was making him into a governable subject and pinning a newpolitical identity on him by co-opting him into state-sponsored hierarchy the sole


TABLE 5 Distribution of Convicts according to Previous Occupation (percentage)

1884–85 1885–86 1890–91 1897–98 1898–99

Total Convicts 11,666 11,867 13,122 11,883 11,913

Govt. Servants 1.4 1.5 1.80 1.95 1.92

Domestics 4.7 4.8 5.42 5.48 5.41

Agriculturists 43.8 44.9 49.76 53.88 54.60

Laborers 10.5 9.4 9.58 9.95 9.87

Miscellaneous 39.6 39.4 33.44 28.74 28.20

Source: Home, Port Blair, June 1887, 34, NAI and Home, Port Blair, March 1880, 25–27,NAI.

TABLE 6 Former Occupations of Male Convicts, 1898–99 to 1907–08

Total Agriculture Labour Artisan Domestic Shops Government Boat/Fish Others

1898–99 10,479 6,088 1,104 1,124 603 346 214 189 803

1899–1900 10,760 6,286 1,126 1,128 631 356 226 186 822

1900–01 11,217 6,580 1,254 1,136 659 370 229 186 827

1901–02 12,038 7,177 1,347 1,169 673 420 238 191 823

1902–03 12,009 7,147 1,377 1,162 669 433 226 192 803

1903–04 13,173 7,919 1,587 1,176 673 482 235 189 912

1904–05 13,392 7,993 1,681 1,182 677 489 232 187 951

1905–06 13,981 8,303 1,846 1,202 680 510 235 185 1,019

1906–07 13,792 8,206 1,835 669 673 499 223 183 1,494

1907–08 13,522 8,019 1,815 664 660 487 239 182 1,455

Source: Home, Port Blair, July 1909, 14, NAI.

aim of the state. The aims and pressures that the state worked with often diverged,contradicted and contested each other and also had much to do with the proclivitiesof the individual officers.

TABLE 7 Employment of Male Convicts (Male) in the Settlement of Port Blair,1898–99 to 1907–08

Prison Commi- Medical Marine Forest Cultiv- Manu- Otherssariat vation facture

1898–99 1,016 164 213 293 620 556 1,172 4,22

1899–1900 1,007 145 136 279 794 546 1,314 4,389

1900–01 1,118 162 125 290 706 616 1,350 3,642

1901–02 920 168 212 329 834 590 1,460 4,239

1902–03 900 202 224 351 954 626 1,356 4,707

1903–04 909 196 243 379 907 494 1,155 5,792

1904–05 931 195 260 373 1,083 565 1,009 6,130

1905–06 1,136 335 275 373 1,080 439 1,016 6,021

1906–07 1,120 668 298 441 1,044 402 928 5,409

1907–08 961 738 308 451 728 371 1,058 5,447

Source: Home, Port Blair, July 1909, 14, NAI.


Notes1 The Andaman Islands are a chain of 204 islands, of various sizes, situated in the Bay

of Bengal. The British set up a colony in the Andamans in March 1858.2 As one official stated, ‘Labour is the grand desideratum in the infancy of every colony

. . . in order to render these Islands a fit abode for man. . . . It is work, hard work thatis wanted’. (Home, Judicial, July–December 1859, No. 51, National Archives ofIndia, New Delhi [hereafter NAI]).

3 They were hunting–gathering tribes, believed by the British to be living in a ‘pre-neolithic state’.

4 The year 1921 has been used as the cut-off point because in this year the sentence oftransportation was abolished and all transportation to Andamans was stopped, exceptof the convicts and communities seeking ‘voluntary’ transportation to the Andamans(or when the overcrowded jails in India had to be temporarily relieved). This bringsabout a significant change in the nature of the labour regime on the Islands and there-fore requires a separate reading.

5 All the ordinary convicts received an allowance of one anna and nine pie per day, outof which they provided for their own clothes and food. Orderlies, petty officers,mechanics, and boatmen received four to five rupees a month, the Commissariatcoolies received four to six rupees. (Home, Public, April 1864, 1–12, A, NAI).

6 Convicts were given tickets after a short probation and those who brought moneywith them were made self-supporters almost on arrival. By 1874, a more rigorousclassification was introduced and no ticket was given until the convict had beenresident for twelve years, a period which was subsequently reduced to ten years.

7 Home, Judicial, 29 July 1859, 20, NAI; Home, Judicial, 9 March 1860, 26–32, A,NAI; Home, Public, 28 March 1862, 67–68, A NAI; Home, Public, 15 September,1862, 40–42, A, NAI; Home, Public, July 1867, 21–211, A, NAI; Home, Public, 2 July1870, 18–19, A, NAI; Home, Port Blair, July 1873, 27–28, A, NAI.

8 Home, Judicial, 1 July 1864, 10–11, NAI.9 This classification was also based on the view that Ford took of crime and criminality.

In Ford’s perception crime was ‘generally the result of idleness or evil habits’ and only‘severe and compulsory labour’ was its proper penalty and cure. Thus, making theconvict perform hard labour and provide for his subsistence was self-reformatory(Ford 1868: 85–86). Thus, his classification had an in-built assumption that the un-skilled labourers, by virtue of lacking any skill, would be relegated to the ‘third class’and would perform hard labour.

10 Home, Public, 29 May 1866, 61–62, A, NAI.11 The Straits Settlement System was upheld as just and equitable by contemporaries

and believed to promote a spirit of industry and fidelity amongst the convicts. (Home,Public, 27 March 1869, 167–69, A, NAI; McNair and Bayliss [1899]; Turnbull [1972:48–49]).

12 Home, Public, 29 May 1866, 61–62, A, NAI.13 This classification also stemmed from a particular view that Man, and the others in

the Governor–General’s council, took of crime, where the social environment led tocriminalization. Crime, in his opinion, was a product of idleness, indolence and laziness,but with one vital difference: crime was not born of the personal character of the cri-minal but of his environment (see Weiner 1990). Crime in Man’s framework was notsomething that threatened the social order but was more of an administrative problem,which could be solved by effective administration.

15 Home, Port Blair, August 1874, 51–84, A, NAI. 16 Home, Port Blair, August 1874, 52, NAI.17 Chain gang was the only explicit form of penal labour.18 Home, Public, 20 December 1865, 37–38, NAI.19 Ibid.20 Home, Public, 15 September 1862, 40–42, A, NAI.21 Home, Judicial, April 1872, 213–15, A, NAI.22 J.S. Campbell’s Report, written in April 1872, in Home, Port Blair, August 1874, 52,

NAI.


23 Home, Port Blair, August 1874, 52, NAI.24 Home, Judicial, 30 December 1871, 21, A, NAI.25 Home, Judicial, April 1872, 213–15, A, NAI.26 Home, Judicial, 30 December 1871, 21, A, NAI.27 Home, Judicial, April 1872, 213–15, A, NAI.28 Home, Port Blair, 1881, 16, NAI.29 Andaman and Nicobar Manual, 1908: 65–66. 30 Home, Port Blair, November 1881, 16, NAI.31 Andaman and Nicobar Manual, 1908: 59–76).32 The introduction of intra-mural labour had been made earlier by J.S. Campbell in

1874 (Home, Port Blair, August 1874, 52, NAI).33 The Cellular Jail was to be the Benthamite Panoptican, with a central watch tower,

and double-storey wings with nearly 600 individual cells constructed as seven radiatingarms.

34 Home, Port Blair, March 1884, 5, NAI; Home, Port Blair, April 1895, 14, NAI; Home,Port Blair, July 1893, 78–81, NAI.

35 Home, Port Blair, May 1906, 137, NAI. 36 Ibid.37 Letter to Lt. Col. H.A. Browning, 6 December 1910, in Home, Port Blair, May 1911,

77–78, NAI. 38 Home, Port Blair, January 1896, 94, NAI. 39 R.C. Temple, ‘The Penal System at the Andamans’, 1879, pp. 292–305, in Temple

Collection MSS/Eur/F98, No. 36, India Office Records, British Library, London.40 Home, Port Blair, June 1890, 74, A, NAI. The Jail was also to serve other aims – be an

effective deterrent, help study the character of the prisoners, improve discipline amongstconvicts, a good means of acclimatizing prisoners and provide an opportunity tomake them literate.

41 Home, Port Blair, January 1915, 37–38, NAI.42 Home, Port Blair, October 1907, 65, NAI.43 Apparently, the Raja of Puri contracted leprosy, and this might be the reason for his

being quarantined and being forced to live with men of lower caste. See Report onLeprosy by the Royal College of Physicians prepared for Her Majesty’s Secretary ofState for the Colonies, London, 1867.

44 Once the Superintendent was even willing to take on Nubian and African long-termprisoners from the East African Protectorate in order to ‘meet the labour difficulty’.(Home, Port Blair, February 1900, 5, A, NAI). For some years, the Settlement officialsdebated transportation of Chinese convicts. They were useful from the point of viewof skilled labour as they made valuable artificers. The Settlement officers were notvery interested in having Chinese convicts because there was a general stereotypeabout them of being ‘of desperate character, convicted of piracy and burglary’ (Home,Public, 15 October 1862, 8–9, A, NAI).

45 Home, Judicial, 16 November 1860, 7–9, A, NAI.46 Home, Judicial, September 1875, 237–39, A, NAI.47 Home, Judicial, 9 March 1860, 18–20, A, NAI.48 ‘Of the Burmese, however, the greater part are serving sentences of ten years, for

engaging too recklessly in the national pastime of dacoity, and many of them areemployed in the jungle and as boatmen’ (Kloss 1903: 27, emphasis added).

49 Home, Judicial, 6 January 1860, 7–23, A, NAI; Home, Judicial, 9 March 1860, 18–20,A, NAI; Home, Port Blair, 18 May 1898, 29–30, A, NAI; Home, Port Blair, 16 Decem-ber 1901, 18, A, NAI; Home, Port Blair, 12 May 1906, 135, A, NAI; Home, Port Blair,20 February 1907, 37, A, NAI.

50 Home, Port Blair, June 1890, 74, NAI; Home, Port Blair, May 1907, 19, A, NAI;Home, Port Blair, January 1918, 80–83, NAI.

51 European convicts were transported even during the time of the first settlement of theAndamans, i.e. 1789–96. (Home, Public, 19 January 1794, 4, A, NAI; Home, Judicial,28 January 1863, 49–51, A, NAI; Home, Public, 31 October 1794, 2, A, NAI; Home,Judicial, 10 September 1858, 20–21, NAI. Also see Yang [2003]).


52 Home, Judicial, 16 July 1858, 28–31, NAI; Home, Judicial, 6 May 1859.53 Home, Judicial, 10 September 1858, 20–21, NAI; Home, Judicial, 7 January 1859, 6–

8, NAI, and Home, Judicial, 1 June 1860, 1–6, NAI.54 Home, Judicial, 7 January 1859, 6–8, NAI.55 A library had also been set up in Port Blair for the European convicts and there were

also discussions about the possibility of the appointment of a clergyman with a familyto the Andamans. (Home, Public, 20 December 1862, 39–40, NAI; Home, Public, 14September 1863, 24–27, A, NAI; Home, Public, 1 February 1865, 1–3, A, NAI; Home,Ecclesiastical, 6 October 1862, 4–5, NAI.)

56 Home, Judicial, 10 September 1858, 7–9, NAI.57 Home, Judicial, September–December 1868, 11–12, NAI.58 Home, Port Blair, July 1886, 98, NAI.59 In Robert Steinfeld’s (2001) account of the nineteenth-century discourse on free and

unfree labour, the ‘duration of the contracted-for service’ formed an index of classifica-tion between free and unfree labour. The working men saw the men under long dura-tion contract service as ‘bound as slaves’ and the ones with short-term contract as‘free’.

60 Home, Judicial, 30 July 1858, 18–20, NAI; Home, Public, 10 September 1858, 60–61,NAI.

61 Home, Public, 27 January 1863, 60–62, A, NAI.62 Whatever marks the life-convict earned for his good behaviour, facilitated the speedy

acquisition of the self-supporter status but did not go towards the remission of hissentence.

63 Foreign, Internal, September 1891, 35–36, B, NAI.64 See The Andaman and Nicobar Manual, 1908.65 See Byrne (1993), for a study on the female convicts in New South Wales whose pres-

ence was also primarily determined by their ‘sexual value . . . to the convict colony’.The fact that women were undervalued and underemployed in Australian penal colo-ny is also borne out by Nicholas (1988).

66 Marriage, as a socio-economic institution, was favoured in this period of history inmost of the plantation colonies as well. See Carter (1995); Mohapatra (1995: 227–60).

67 Home, Public, 7 June 1865, A, NAI.68 R.H. Lowis, ‘Sketch of Life in the Andaman Islands’, Mss Eur D 1032, IOL.69 For a discussion of women’s work, see Banerjee (1989: 267–301).70 Home, Judicial, 25 June 1858, 21–23, NAI.71 Home, Judicial, 20 August 1858, 25–33, NAI.72 The Andaman and Nicobar Manual, 1908; 69–71; Home, Public, 4 February 1871,

168–71, A, NAI.73 Gratuities: Jemadars at Rs 5 per month; First Tindal at Rs 2; Second Tindal and Rs 1;

Peons at Rs 1; First Class Workmen at Rs 2; Second Class Workmen at Rs 1; ThirdClass Workmen at 8 Annas; and the Fourth Class Learners were not given any gratuity.(Handbook for the Andaman and Nicobars, 1877: 31–32.)

74 The Andaman and Nicobar Manual, 1908: 69–71.75 Handbook for the Andaman and Nicobars, 1877: 31–32.76 Home, Public, 1 January 1870, 83–85, NAI.77 Temple Collection, Mss Eur/F98, No. 40, India Office Records, British Library, London

[IOR].78 Home, Public, 4 August 1865, 7–8, A, NAI. A breach of law by the free settlers was

not punishable under the provisions of the penal code but the offences committedwithin the limits of the Settlement constituted ‘local offences’ (Home, Port Blair, Aug-ust 1874, 52, A, NAI).

79 There is a vast amount of literature in relation to Australian labour history whichestablishes the crucial role played by aboriginal labour in the development of the‘Frontier’; and the manner in which it was part of the policy of racial management aswell. See, for instance, Bennett (2005); Hannah (2005); Rowley (1970; R. Evans


(1984); Reynolds (1982); Mcgrath (1987); May (1994); Brock (1995); Hodson (1993);Bairstow (1993).

80 Home, Public, 28 December 1866, 94–96, A, NAI.81 Home, Public, 11 January 1864, 10–11, A, NAI.

82 J.N. Homfray’s report on the ‘Andaman Home’, in Home, Public 8 April 1865, 35, A,NAI.

83 Home, Public, 21 June 1865, 51, A, NAI.84 Home, Public, 19 June 1869, 2–4, NAI.85 Home, Port Blair, 12 May 1906, 135, NAI.86 Home, Public, August 1867, 49, NAI.87 Home, Public, 21 June 1865, 51, A, NAI.88 Home, Public, 21 August 1869, 165–66, NAI.89 Temple Collection, Mss Eur/F98, No. 40, IOR.90 Home, Judicial, 25 June 1858, 21–23, A, NAI.91 Revenue and Agriculture Department, Forests, November 1910, 6–8, A, NAI.92 Ferrar, ‘Progress Report of Forests’, 1886.93 Home, Jails, 1922, 8, NAI.94 Revenue and Agriculture Department, Forests, November 1910, 6–8, A, NAI; Home,

Port Blair, August 1920, 77–78, A, NAI; and Home, Port Blair, July 1920, 120, NAI.95 Home Post Blair, July 1920, 120, NAI.96 Home, Port Blair, January 1919, 61, NAI.97 Home, Public, 28 March 1862, 67–68, A, NAI.98 Home, Port Blair, August 1874, 52, A, NAI.99 J.S. Campbell mentions these rates in his report written in April 1872, in Home, Port

Blair, August 1874, 52, A, NAI.100 Home, Public, 24 January 1865, 33–35, NAI.101 For example, Sen states that in the Andamans ‘the power to punish was a negotiated

product of political bargaining between semi-autonomous interests within and withoutthe colonial government’.

102 Donald Denoon (1984) has examined these issues with regard to the temperate coloniesto which the European labour force migrated.

103 Prabhu Mohaptara in his study of labour organization during the nineteenth centuryin colonial India (presented at a seminar at the Centre for Historical Studies, JNU,2004), has shown that the non-availability of labour did not always contribute to asituation where labourers were exploited (read subjected to physically coercive formsof labour extraction). Subjecting labour to penal contracts which tied them in an un-equal and exploitative relationship with the employer could also take place in a situa-tion of over-supply. The question was not, therefore, of supply and demand of labourbut really that of the absence or refusal of labourers to ‘work under certain conditions’.The labour regime in the Andamans was also not determined by the supply-and-demand quotient but by the non-availability of labour for performing certain types ofworks, under particular work conditions.

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Working an Island Colony: Convict Labour Regime in Colonial Andamans

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