New Histories of the Andaman Islands Landscape, Place and Identity in the Bay of Bengal, 1790–2012

This innovative, multidisciplinary exploration of the unique history of the Andaman Islands as a hunter-gatherer society, colonial penal colony, and state-engineered space of settlement and development ranges across the theoretical, conceptual and thematic concerns of history, anthropology and historical geography. Covering the entire period of post-settlement Andamans history, from the first (failed) British occupation of the Islands in the 1790s up to the year 2012, the authors examine imperial histories of expansion and colonization, decolonization, anti-colonialism and nationalism, Japanese occupation, independence and partition, migration, commemoration and contemporary issues of Indigenous welfare. New Histories of the Andaman Islands offers a new way of thinking about the history of South Asia, and will be thought-provoking reading for scholars of settler colonial societies in other contexts, as well as those engaged in studies of nationalism and postcolonial state formation, ecology, visual cultures and the politics of representation.

1. Introduction; Part I. Contentious Landscapes: 2. Improving visions, troubled landscapes: the legacies of colonial Ferrargunj; 3. Entangled struggles, contested histories: the Second World War and after; 4. The making of a 'rhizomatic' landscape: place, space and the politics of memory in the Andamanese Islands; Part II. Affective Landscapes: 5. The Andaman local born: history, identity and convict descent; 6. Dwelling in fluid spaces: the Matuas of the Andaman Islands; 7. In pursuit of fireflies: the poetics and politics of 'lightscapes' in the Jarawa forests; Part III. Imagined Landscapes: 8. Visual representations of the penal colony; 9. Endangered landscapes, dream destinations: the shifting frames of 'tropicality' in the Andaman Islands; 10. Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

Clare Anderson is Professor of History at the University of Leicester. She has written widely on the history of penal transportation, including most recently Subaltern Lives: Biographies of Colonialism in the Indian Ocean World, 1790–1920 (Cambridge, 2012).
Madhumita Mazumdar is Associate Professor at the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information Communication Technology (DAIICT), Gujarat. She has a specialized interest in the social and cultural history of science and technology in India. She is presently involved in research on the Andaman Islands where she explores the historical legacies of colonial science in the shaping of contemporary developmentalist agendas and tribal welfare policies. Much of her published work derives from her early researches into science and the cultural politics of nationalism in colonial Bengal. She has also co-authored articles with Vishvajit Pandya on the contemporary history of tribal welfare of the Andaman Islands.
Vishvajit Pandya earned his Doctorate in Anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1987. Since 1983 he has been involved with ethnographic research on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Apart from numerous papers in academic journals, he has published two major books: Above the Forest (1993) and In the Forest (2009). He has held teaching positions in the USA and New Zealand, and is at present Professor of Anthropology at the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information Communication Technology (DAIICT), Gujarat. He is also the founder and honorary director of the Andaman Nicobar Tribal Research Institute (ANTRI) at Port Blair in the Andamans.