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Wednesday 30 March 2016 16.30 - 18.30
D-4 ETH06a Exile, Deportation and Penal Transportation in the Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth Centuries: Perspectives from the Colonies I
Aula 1, Nivel 0
Networks: Criminal Justice , Ethnicity and Migration Chair: Christian De Vito
Organizer: Christian De Vito Discussants: -
Anabela Francisca do Nascimento Cunha : Stereotypes about Exiles in Angola, 1892-1932
In social and psychological sciences, stereotypes are defined as cognitive structures that influence the behavior and attitudes towards groups and individuals; determine the judgments, beliefs and evaluations about the characteristics of groups and interfere with information that takes place on other subjects; and support human process of interaction with the ... (Show more)
In social and psychological sciences, stereotypes are defined as cognitive structures that influence the behavior and attitudes towards groups and individuals; determine the judgments, beliefs and evaluations about the characteristics of groups and interfere with information that takes place on other subjects; and support human process of interaction with the world, providing a legitimation for collective action aimed at, and against, certain groups.
During the centuries of existence of the banishment system in the Portuguese empire (degredo), multiple stereotypes were constructed around exiles as a group. Moreover, after the system was abolished, such stereotypes continued to flourish, and influenced, and still influence, both collective memories and scientific discourse. The existing scholarship on the topic is no exception to this rule.
Building on published studies on the subject, the presentation analyzes the persistence of stereotypes related to the banishment of convicts. The focus lies on Angola in the period between 1892 and 1932, when degredados played a major role in the processes of penetration and occupation, and participated in the process of colonization of the region. Their condition of sentenced subjects legitimized the formation of stereotypes on, and against, them, which in turn impacted their social inclusion, their interactions with other citizens and possibly also their regeneration. For centuries, “incorrigible”, “lazy”, and “immoral” were among the stereotypes involved in the characterization of banished individuals, and especially the social stereotypes referred to degregados transported from Portugal to Angola contributed to soidify stigmas and prejudices. (Show less)

Lorraine Paterson : Ethnoscapes of Exile: Political Deportees from Indochina in a Colonial Asian World
Throughout the course of French colonialism in Indochina (1863-1954), over ten thousand prisoners – many of them convicted of political crimes – were exiled to twelve different geographical locations throughout the French empire. From Gabon to Guiana, there was hardly a corner of the French empire to which they weren’t ... (Show more)
Throughout the course of French colonialism in Indochina (1863-1954), over ten thousand prisoners – many of them convicted of political crimes – were exiled to twelve different geographical locations throughout the French empire. From Gabon to Guiana, there was hardly a corner of the French empire to which they weren’t sent. However, many of these prisoners came from a Chinese background or a culturally Chinese world and the sites to which they were exiled (even the penal colonies themselves) contained diasporic Chinese communities. For many prisoners knowing Chinese was their greatest asset or being able to “pass” as Chinese the most valuable tool to facilitate escape. Arguably for many of these prisoners the ethnoscapes of their exile were not as unfamiliar a world as the French authorities had intended. Examining the lives of these exiles reveals first that the ability of the colonial state to act as a surveillance apparatus was far more limited than imagined. The colonial administration was often chaotic in these exilic locales and the French authorities were often unable to police boundaries between prisoners from Indochina and the resident Chinese communities. The French administration had difficulty keeping track of these exiles, understanding the language they spoke and wrote, categorizing them racially and so forth. If exile is in one sense the ultimate exercise of colonial power – capable of moving bodies to distant places – the exilic experience of political prisoners from Indochina also makes clear that colonial power was fragmentary, arbitrary, and incomplete in its ability to constrain cultural and political flows. (Show less)

Katherine Roscoe : "Convict Mechanics", "Double-Dyed Malefactors" and "Aboriginal Offenders". Island Networks of Penal Expulsion in Colonial Australia
This paper explores the intra-imperial circulation of convicts transported from mainland Australia to a number of surrounding islands. The case-studies demonstrate the varied use of islands for incarceration of different people, over an extended period of time. The case studies are: the transportation of skilled British and Irish convicts to ... (Show more)
This paper explores the intra-imperial circulation of convicts transported from mainland Australia to a number of surrounding islands. The case-studies demonstrate the varied use of islands for incarceration of different people, over an extended period of time. The case studies are: the transportation of skilled British and Irish convicts to Melville Island in the Northern Territory (1824-28); the expulsion of colonial convicts to Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour (1839-1869); the imprisonment of Indigenous convicts on Rottnest Island, (1839-1931); and the transferral of prisoners to St Helena Island in Queensland (1869-1932). Historians of convict Australia tend to study the transportation of convicts from metropolitan Britian and Ireland, and their subsequent dispersal as convict workers around the Australian mainland. Instead this paper presents Australian islands as interconnected sites of puntive expulsion, connected through circulations of convicts, administrators and policy. By analysing convict islands in one frame the metropole and the mainland are both decentred, in favour of dynamic, mobile and regional frames of analysis.The paper will engage with the way in which empire was mediated by negotiations between administrators in the colonies. As the nineteenth century progressed circulations of convicts to islands increasingly threatened and superceded relationships with the metropole. Secondly, the penal islands trascended traditional periodisation by continuing and adapting their penal function after the abolition of transportation from elsewhere in the British empire, and through transitions from colonialism to independence. Thirdly, these case studies demonstrate that islands were selected for diverse purposes including territorial expansion, extraction of labour and for the social control of Indigenous people. Finally, the paper will draw demonstrate strong links between the destination, the type of convict, and their sentence, bringing legal cultures into one frame with the working geographies, and cultural associations, of the island prisons. (Show less)

Minako Sakata : Unwilling Mobility: Labour Mobilization and Forced Relocation in the Japanese Empire, 1875-1945
In general terms, the Japanese government was unwilling to move people out of the colonies. Thus, practices of migration from the colonies were limited to circumstances of perceived need, usually related to the goal of securing territorial sovereignty. In these cases, the simultaneous removal and confinement/segregation of individuals under legal ... (Show more)
In general terms, the Japanese government was unwilling to move people out of the colonies. Thus, practices of migration from the colonies were limited to circumstances of perceived need, usually related to the goal of securing territorial sovereignty. In these cases, the simultaneous removal and confinement/segregation of individuals under legal or administrative control took place. This paper addresses why and how this occurred in the late nineteenth-century and during WWII. More, it interrogates about the entanglements that existed among those practices, and with other flows of coerced migrations.
An early case was the relocation of the Sakhalin Ainu and the Kuril Ainu. After the treaty of Saint Petersburg in 1875, the Kuril Islands were incorporated into the Japanese territory, whereas Sakhalin became part of Russia’s empire. As the Kuril Ainu, and those Sakhalin Ainu who did not choose to become Russian, became Japanese citizens, the Hokkaido Development Commissioner removed them from Russian border: Kuril Ainu were deported to Shikotan island, near Hokkaido, and Sakhalin Ainu to inland Hokkaido. The relocation was officially presented as a “protective” measure, which included the provision of food and other basic products; however, border security issues clearly played a role in it.
At the other chronological extreme considered in the presentation, relocation from the colonies occurred during WWII in two distinct ways. On the one hand, in the last years of the war, workers from occupied Korea and China were deported to mainland Japan and other colonies, and forced to engage in mining- and public construction works. In this way, they were caught up into a coercive system called Kangokubeya (literally “prison room”), which in turn stemmed from convict labour practices implemented from 1881 to the 1890s, but was now coupled with illegal practices rather than with state-controlled work. The Korean and Chinese workers, who were not sentenced under criminal laws, were subjected to governmental measures though, and forced to endure deportation, harsh labour conditions, confinement and violence, notwithstanding legal attempts to improve the situation. On the other hand, extramural prison labour revived during WWII, and, by request of the navy, both Japanese and Korean convicts were transported to colonies such as Hainan Island or Tinian Island to construct military airbases. (Show less)



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