Clare Anderson provides a radical new reading of histories of empire and nation, showing that the history of punishment is not connected solely to the emergence of prisons and penitentiaries, but to histories of governance, occupation, and global connections across the world. Exploring punitive mobility to islands, colonies, and remote inland and border regions over a period of five centuries, she proposes a close and enduring connection between punishment, governance, repression, and nation and empire building, and reveals how states, imperial powers, and trading companies used convicts to satisfy various geo-political and social ambitions. Punitive mobility became intertwined with other forms of labour bondage, including enslavement, with convicts a key source of unfree labour that could be used to occupy territories. Far from passive subjects, however, convicts manifested their agency in various forms, including the extension of political ideology and cultural transfer, and vital contributions to contemporary knowledge production.
Author(s): Clare Anderson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 491
City: Cambridge
Copyright_page
Dedication
Contents
Figures
Maps
Tables
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction
Part I
2 Empires and Colonies
3 Nations, Borders, and Islands
4 Enslavement, Banishment, and Penal Transportation
5 Imperial Governance
6 Insurgency, Politics, and Religion
Part II
7 Punishment and Penal Systems
8 Encounters, Exploration, and Knowledge
9 Medicine, Criminality, and Race
10 The Human Sciences
11 Escape and Extradition
12 Conclusion
Appendix: Principal and Selected Imperial and Latin
Bibliography
Archives
476_Index
