Introduction: A Global History of Convicts and Penal Colonies

Clare Anderson

doi:10.5040/9781350000704.ch-001

Abstract

[First paragraph] In 1415, the Portuguese Empire used convicts as part of an expeditionary force sent to conquer the Moroccan presidio (fort) of Ceuta in North Africa. This marked the first known use of condemned criminals by a European power in an expansionary imperial project. Numerous other global powers emulated the Portuguese example in the years, decades and centuries that followed. The Spanish, Dutch, Scandinavians, British, French, Japanese, Chinese, Russians and Soviets all transported convicts over large distances of land or sea; as did the independent states of Latin America, including Cuba, Mexico, Ecuador, Brazil and Argentina. Transportation was a means of punishment, deterrence, and population management and, through the expropriation of convict labour, of occupying and settling distant frontiers. Convicts travelled multi-directionally, shipped outwards from Europe and other metropolitan centres, within nations, and between colonies and the so-called peripheries of empires and polities. Excepting Antarctica, its extent touched every continent of the globe.

Highlights

A Global History of Convicts and Penal Colonies Clare Anderson
This enables an appreciation of the diversity and range of penal patterns of connection that sometimes entirely circumvented metropolitan Europe. It brings to the fore the scale of the transportation of Asians, Africans and other non-European peoples. We propose that it is only when we view metropolitan centres, regions and what are often defined as geographical peripheries within a single analytical frame, that we can begin to trace the enormous importance and impact of convict transportation and penal colonies as means of governance and unfree labour supply
The forced movement of convicts over large distances remains integral to criminal sanctions in many parts of the modern world, including most notably in the Russian Federation

Summary

Introduction

In 1415, the Portuguese Empire used convicts as part of an expeditionary force sent to conquer the Moroccan presidio (fort) of Ceuta in North Africa. This marked the first known use of condemned criminals by a European power in an expansionary imperial project. Deportation, exile and collective resettlement in Russia and the USSR adds between 10 and 25 million to the statistics (Table 1.1) This global tally substantially augments previously available estimates.[1]. These expansive convict flows both succeeded and co-existed with other means of punishing and putting to labour criminalized and socially marginal or undesirable people. From the turn of the nineteenth century, they incorporated new cellular means of incarceration – for

A Global History of Convicts and Penal Colonies

Conclusion

Findings

27 I borrow the term ‘reach for the trace’ from novelist Amitav Ghosh