New Histories of the Andaman Islands

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.

• 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.

'This brilliant and groundbreaking book is an interdisciplinary collaboration between three leading scholars. It situates the Andaman Islands within multiple scales of imperial and national history, while remaining deeply attentive to the textures of local society. It will be essential reading for scholars of modern South Asia and the Indian Ocean, historians of imperialism, and historians of global migration.' Sunil Amrith, Harvard University, Massachusetts