Introduction

This chapter will consider one of the most important penal and spatial legacies of the mutiny-rebellion, Britain's permanent settlement of the Andaman Islands as a colony for the reception of convicts. Before the outbreak of the revolt the British had vague plans to populate the Islands, setting up the Andamans Committee to consider the issue in April 1857. At this time the government saw convicts as a means to an end, as labourers who might secure its long-term aim of productive colonial expansion, notably the protection of shipping and trade routes. In the aftermath of the uprising the British required urgently a place for the exile and imprisonment of mutineer-rebels. The trajectory of proposed settlement therefore changed between the constitution of the committee a month before the revolt began and its departure for the Islands in November 1857. The committee's original plan was to consider the suitability of the Andamans for colonization, but by the time it left India its brief had changed. Government then assumed that the Islands would be settled as a penal colony and the committee was asked to report on where best such a settlement should be located. Clearly, both during pre-settlement surveys and in the months after transportation began the government recognized convicts' economic and social potential as permanent settlers. In part, this was related to the government's desire to promote the colony's self-sufficiency.