Subaltern Lives uses biographical fragments of the lives of convicts, captives, sailors, slaves, indentured labourers and indigenous peoples to build a fascinating new picture of colonial life in the nineteenth-century Indian Ocean. Moving between India, Africa, Mauritius, Burma, Singapore, Ceylon, the Andaman Islands and the Australian colonies, Clare Anderson offers fresh readings of the nature and significance of 'networked' Empire. She reveals the importance of penal transportation for colonial expansion and sheds new light on convict experiences of penal settlements and colonies, as well as the relationship between convictism, punishment and colonial labour regimes. The book also explores the nature of colonial society during this period and embeds subaltern biographies into key events like the abolition of slavery, the Anglo-Sikh Wars and the Indian Revolt of 1857. This is an important new perspective on British colonialism which also opens up new possibilities for the writing of history itself.

This fascinating book uses biographical fragments to shed new light on colonial life and convictism in the nineteenth-century Indian Ocean.

About the Author
Clare Anderson is Professor of History at the University of Leicester. She is currently developing comparative work on European penal colonies, on the interface between 'academic' and 'family' history, and the relationship between history, sociology and anthropology.


Book Information
ISBN 9781107015098
Author Clare Anderson
Format Hardback
Page Count 238
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 490g
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 155mm * 15mm