Exile in Colonial Asia: Kings, Convicts, Commemoration ed. by Ronit Ricci (review)

This collection of ten very diverse essays all relate to the punishment of exile in Asia. Its subtitle, Kings, Convicts, Commemoration indicates that these essays center on one of these three aspects of the general idea of “exile,” all within an Asian context. However, in many ways, the stories they tell are of the individual versus the masses. The collection opens with a very broadly focused essay by Clare Anderson (“The Global History of Exile in Asia, c. 1700–1900”), which provides the context for this multifaceted idea of “exile” in Asia, and (as with all the essays) is followed by a bibliography. In Anderson’s case, however, the reader will find virtually all the most pertinent recent scholarship on this topic. Anderson has written extensively on the British use of convict labor in the Indian Ocean region in works such as Convicts in the Indian Ocean: Transportation from South Asia to Mauritius 1815–53⁶ and Subaltern Lives: Biographies of Colonialism in the Indian Ocean World, 1790–1920.⁷ Other essential works for this region include Kerry Ward’s Networks of Empire: Forced Migration in the Dutch East India Company,⁸ and Colin Forster’s France and Botany Bay: The Lure of a Penal Colony,⁹ to name but two.

These essays grew from a workshop held in Australia in 2013. Many of the contributions in this very well-crafted and complex anthology provide an entirely different view of exile: They highlight the exiled individual. In focusing on kings, princes, and important political leaders sentenced to exile, the essays stand in contrast to the much larger and broader studies of the ebb and flow of large numbers of convicts (that is, the masses). The essays by Robert Aldrich on the last king of Kandy’s exile, Anand Yang on Bhai Maharaj Singh’s banishment to Singapore, Ronit Ricci on the Javanese royal family exile to Sri Lanka, Penny Edwards on the escapades of the Prince of Burma, and Sri Margana on the Sultan of Yogyakarta all fall into this first category.

As stated in several of these essay, many factors set these individuals apart from the great flux of transported convicts, who were often sent to the same places at the same time. First, such individuals were normally literate and left personal letters and diaries, sources that are limited or rare for ordinary convicts. The treatment of these political figures was entirely different, some might even say privileged, when compared to that of ordinary convicts. They were not forced to labor, and their oversight by the colonial authorities was relatively benign. In fact, the entire purpose of their exile was for the colonial power to retain control of a given region and to prevent political, social, or military resistance. These essays thus provide insights into colonial spaces where a colonial power could and did send a trouble maker of some importance, such as Singapore, where Punjabis were sent, and Sri Lanka, where Indonesians were conducted. However, these essays about significant individuals demand of the reader a firm grounding in the pertinent regional or national histories. Without it, seeing the bigger picture beyond the one individual concerned can be difficult.

Convicts and communities, the subjects of more mainstream literature on transportation and forced labor, are addressed in four essays: Timo Kaartinen’s on the Banda Islands’ diaspora; Jean Gelman Taylor’s on Indonesian slaves in the Cape Colony; Carol Liston’s on convicts’ lives in New South Wales; and Lorraine Paterson’s on the Vietnamese in New Caledonia. Both the British and French use of penal labor have extensive literatures, and in this collection it is possible to see their continuity with the Dutch example as well.

No collection can be one hundred percent complete and there are some inevitable gaps, such as on the Chinese or Japanese use of this punishment. The Portuguese are also absent from this collection...