Abstract

AbstractThis article studies the strategic disciplinary and productive function of the colonial penal system of the Dutch East Indies (1816–1942). Developing convict labour as the main punishment for minor public and labour offences, the Dutch colonial regime created an increasingly effective system of exploitation that weaved together colonial discipline, control, and coercion. This system was based on two majorcarceral connections: firstly, the interrelated development and employment of different coerced labour regimes, and, secondly, the disciplinary role of the legal-carceral regime within the wider colonial project, supporting not only the management of public order and labour control, but also colonial production systems. Punishment of colonial subjects through “administrative justice” (police law) accelerated in the second half of the nineteenth century, leading to an explosion in the number of convictions. The convict labour force produced by this carceral regime was vital for colonial production, supporting colonial goals such as expansion, infrastructure, extraction, and production. The Dutch colonial system was a very early, but quite advanced, case of a colonial carceral state.

Highlights

  • CARCERAL CONNECTIONS the course of history is often portrayed as one in which modernization and, more recently, globalization have propelled the world forward on a path of increasing freedom, the impact of historical lines of coercive, incarcerating, and disciplining strategies cannot be ignored

  • The Dutch colonial penal system was not based on the export of convicts from the metropole to the colony

  • The second carceral connection lies hidden in the mechanisms developed to secure public order and control labour through the local administration of justice

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Summary

CARCERAL CONNECTIONS

The course of history is often portrayed as one in which modernization and, more recently, globalization have propelled the world forward on a path of increasing freedom, the impact of historical lines of coercive, incarcerating, and disciplining strategies cannot be ignored. It indicates, firstly, that the development of different labour relations that were coerced (convict and slave labour) or marked by strong coercive elements (corvée and contract labour) was interrelated. That the development of different labour relations that were coerced (convict and slave labour) or marked by strong coercive elements (corvée and contract labour) was interrelated It argues that there were deep links between the penal system and wider regimes of colonial-administrative and labour control. Combined, these two different carceral connections underpinned the colonial system and were crucial for accelerating the mobilization of coerced convict labour in the second half of the nineteenth century. Convicts “became overwhelmingly dominant as a form of punishment for every type of crime”.5 Reid’s observations aptly capture the importance and strategic use of convict labour but leave under-examined the vital link between the penal system and the wider colonial disciplinary and coercive labour regimes

FROMSL AV E RY T O C O RV ÉEANDCONVICTLABOUR
COLONIALL AW ANDCOERCIVELABOURREGIMES
THE CARCERAL COLONY
EMPLOYING CONVICT LABOUR
Prison production
Irrigation works
BALI LOMBOK
Poeloe Laoet
CARCERAL REGIME AND COLONIAL EXPLOI TAT I O N
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