Imperial Andamans: Colonial Encounter and Island History (Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies)

This book traverses the Indian Ocean in the period when the British held sway over the major oceanic waters of the world. In reviving the history of the Andamans as an important imperial prize, it offers a fresh perspective on the history of British colonialism, nationalism and the creation of modern India from its geographic periphery. Imperial Andamans traverses the Indian Ocean in the period when the British held sway over the major oceanic waters of the world. In reviving the history of the Andamans as an imperial prize, a chess piece in the imperial oceanic game, this book offers a fresh perspective on the history of British colonialism, nationalism and the creation of modern India from its geographic periphery, which was anything but marginal to Indian nationalism and Britain's oceanic empire. In this historical narrative the Andamans appear both as a space where history was written and a space created by history. What's more, in this story the historians of the Andaman Islands do not appear merely as spectators, but as actors, who, in writing the history of the space, are as much complicit in creating and authoring the space as the ancient and medieval travellers and writers, the colonial surveyors and administrators, and the Indian nationalists Front Matter....Pages i-xviii Introduction....Pages 1-15 The Island Problematic....Pages 16-34 Colonizing the Bay....Pages 35-60 Reclaiming the Wild....Pages 61-87 Redemptive Space....Pages 88-103 Labour — The Grand Desideratum....Pages 104-131 Myriad Andamans....Pages 132-160 Island Colony and the Penal Settlement....Pages 161-186 Conclusion: Colonial Encounter and Island History....Pages 187-191 Back Matter....Pages 192-282 Machine generated contents note: Introduction -- Andamans Imagined -- Colonizing the Bay -- Redemptive Space -- Natures Intrigue -- Working to Settle the Colony -- Myriad Andamans -- Castigating & apos;Hell on Earth & apos