Empires and Colonial Incarceration in the Twentieth Century

Philip J. Havik, Helena Pinto Janeiro, Pedro Aires Oliveira, Irene Flunser Pimentel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032002736
• eBook ISBN: 9781000457766
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This book engages with a controversial issue, namely the establishment of penal colonies and concentration camps in imperial spaces, which have informed ongoing debates on the repressive practices of colonial rule and popular resistance against it. The contributors offer a reassessment of the history of politically motivated incarceration based upon a multi-disciplinary perspective in a global, imperial setting during the twentieth century.

The introduction and seven chapters engage with comparative and transnational perspectives on political persecution, forced confinement and colonial rule in British, French, German, Belgian and Portuguese dominions in Africa, Asia, Oceania and Latin America. Addressing political incarceration's global imperial dimensions, they focus upon the organisation, strategies, narratives and practices associated with political internment in Africa (Angola, Tanzania, Rhodesia, South Africa), Latin America (French Guyana) and the Pacific region (New Caledonia). Penal legislation, policies of convict transport and political imprisonment, resettlement, prison regimes, resistance and liberation struggles, counter insurgency, prisoner agency, and prisons as cultural spaces and of memory are discussed here for different time periods from the mid-1800s to the late twentieth century. The chapters build upon the ongoing debate on political incarceration in the empire and the remarkable dynamic scientific research witnessed over the last decades. As a result, they provide novel insights into the nature of legal systems, colonial discourse, memory, racial segregation and persecution, prisoners' narratives of practices of punishment and incarceration, and human rights abuses in imperial spaces.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. The editors have also written an original conclusion to the present volume.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction Empires and Colonial Incarceration in the Twentieth Century
• Prison and Law, Repression and Resistance: Colonialism and Beyond
• The Penal World in the French Empire: A Comparative Study of French Transportation and its Legacy in Guyana and New Caledonia
• Graves, Houses of Pain and Execution: Memories of the German Prisons after the Majimaji War in Tanzania (1904–1908)
• The Productivity of Political Imprisonment: Stories from Rhodesia
• Colonial Incarceration and Selective Memories: What Is Remembered? Who Is Forgotten? The Case of Peasant Women Deported to São Nicolau (Angola, 1969)
• The Penal Origins of Colonial Model Villages: From Aborted Concentration Camps to Forced Resettlement in Angola (1930–1969)
• Contextualising Apartheid at the End of Empire: Repression, ‘Development’ and the Bantustans
• Conclusion: Political Repression, Confinement in Empire and Post-Colonial Legacies
• Index