The Indian Uprising of 1857-8: Prisons, Prisoners and Rebellion Hardcover - 2007

From the rear cover

This carefully researched book fills a major gap in the historiography of colonial India.' Sumit Guha, Professor of History, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey '...yields fascinating insights into the lived experiences of individuals all too often silenced by history and in so doinng makes an invaluable contribution to the historiography of colonial India.' Douglas M Peers, Professor of History, University of Calgary 'Anderson makes a highly significant contribution to the understanding of subaltern lives and to the histories of residence and repression.' David Arnold, Professor of History, University of Warwick During the military, social and economic unrest that spread across North India during the period 1857-8, mutineers and rebels targeted dozens of colonial jails in what was the largest mass jail break in the history of the British Empire and set over 20,000 prisoners free. For the first time, the scale, nature and impact of this phenomenon is explored thoroughly in this remarkable book. Based on extensive archival research in Britain and India, Anderson examines why mutineer-rebels chose to attack prisons and release prisoners, discusses the impact of the destruction of the jails on British penal policy in mainland India, considers the relationship between India and its penal settlements in Southeast Asia, re-examines Britain's decision to settle the Andaman Islands as a penal colony in 1858 and re-evaluates the experiences of mutineer-rebel convicts there. This book makes an important contribution to histories of the mutiny-rebellion, British colonial South Asia, British expansion in the Indian Ocean and incarceration and transportation. Coinciding with the 150th anniversary of the mutiny-rebellion, this book will be of interest to academics and students researching the history of colonial India, the history of empire and expansion and the history of imprisonment and incarceration. Clare Anderson is Senior Lecturer in the School of Historical Studies, University of Leicester. She is the author of Legible Bodies: Race, Criminality and Colonialism in South Asia (Berg, 1994) and Convicts in the Indian Ocean: Transportation from South Asia to Mauritius, 1815-53 (Macmillan, 2000).