"Subaltern Lives uses biographical fragments of the lives of convicts, captives, sailors, slaves, indentured labourers and indigenous peoples to build a fascinating new picture of colonial life in the nineteenth-century Indian Ocean. Moving between India, Africa, Mauritius, Burma, Singapore, Ceylon, the Andaman Islands and the Australian colonies, Clare Anderson offers fresh readings of the nature and significance of 'networked' Empire. She reveals the importance of penal transportation for colonial expansion and sheds new light on convict experiences of penal settlements and colonies, as well as the relationship between convictism, punishment and colonial labour regimes. The book also explores the nature of colonial society during this period and embeds subaltern biographies into key events like the abolition of slavery, the Anglo-Sikh Wars and the Indian Revolt of 1857. This is an important new perspective on British colonialism which also opens up new possibilities for the writing of history itself"--

"This book explores fragments from the lives of socially marginal men and women who were associated with Indian Ocean penal settlements and colonies in the nineteenth century. It interrogates colonialism from a subaltern history perspective, and places penal transportation in a broad global context. It takes a life-writing approach, weaving together biographical snapshots of convicts - ordinary Indians and Eurasians; African slaves, apprentices and ex-slaves; indentured labourers; soldiers and rebels - with the lives of sailors, indigenous peoples and the 'poor whites' of Empire. Subaltern Lives brings into focus convict experiences of transportation and penal settlements and colonies, as well as the relationship between convictism, punishment and colonial labour regimes. It also cuts a slice into society and social transformation in the nineteenth century, analysing the making of colonial identities, the nature of social capital in the colonial context, and networks of Empire across the Indian Ocean and beyond"--