Abstract
Popular mythology portrayed the Andamans as forbidding and ominous islands that brought nothing but ruin to those who had the misfortune to step on their shores. One finds the earliest references to the Andamans in a south Indian inscription and the notes and memoirs of the pre-colonial travellers and adventurers crossing the Indian Ocean. All of them without exception characterized the Andamans as being inhabited by ferocious anthropophagi. The English East India Company2 (EEIC) was the first to venture into the hitherto uncharted waters of the Bay of Bengal to survey the Andaman Islands. The first EEIC surveyor to navigate the waters of the Andamans in 1771 was a hydrographer called Captain John Ritchie.3 He was followed by Captain Thomas Forrest, Lt. Archibald Blair of the Bombay Marine, Captain Alexander Kyd, the then Surveyor General of India and Lt. Robert H. Colebrook of the Bengal Engineers in the 1780s, as colonial surveyors.4 The surveying of the Bay, its islands and harbours was part of a larger colonial project, which the EEIC initiated after having gained access to political power by establishing its control over the revenues of Bengal.5 By the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the Company was in dire need of better harbour accommodation for its Bay of Bengal shipping, which was ‘practically non-existent along the east coast of India’.6 Their unfamiliarity with the geography of India had forced the British to depend on maps ‘that had been published in Venice, Holland, France, and England’ which were based ‘on tradition and on tales of mariners and travellers’.7
The events of history often lead to islands. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they make use of them.
— Fernand Braudel1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
B. Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1996
C.A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1996
J.B. Harley (edited by Paul Laxton) The New Venture of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2001
Matthew H. Edney, Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765–1843, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1997.
R.H. Phillimore, Historical Records of the Survey of India, vol. 1, Eighteenth Century, Survey of India, Dehradun, 1945, p. 5.
Alastair Pennycook, in his English and the Discourses on Cannibalism, Routledge, London and New York, 1998.
Charles Verlinden, ‘The Transfer of Colonial Techniques from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic’, in F. Fernandez-Armesto, ed., The European Opportunity, Variorum, Aldershot, 1995, pp. 225–248
Eric Leed, The Mind of the Traveller: From Gilgamesh to Global Tourism, New York, Basic Books, 1991, p. 134
Jyotsna G. Singh, ‘History of Colonial Ethnography’, 2001, pp. 197–210; Seymour Phillips, ‘The Outer World of the European Middle Ages’, in Stuart Schwartz, ed., Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting and Reflecting on the Encounters Between the Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1994, pp. 23–63
Stephen Greenblatt, Marvellous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1991.
Spurr, The Rhetoric of Empire, 1993 and Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 1992. Also see Brian V. Street, The Savage in Literature: Representations of ‘Primitive’ Society in English Fiction 1858–1920, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1975.
Moti Chandra in his Trade and Trade Routes in Ancient India, Abhinav Publications, New Delhi, 1977
Early history of the Andamans is reminiscent of the Waqwaq Islands, see Shawkat M. Toorawa, ‘The Medieval Waqwaq Islands and the Mascarenes’, in Toorawa, ed., The Western Indian Ocean: Essays on Islands and Islanders, The Hassam Toorawa Trust, Port Louis, 2007, pp. 49–66.
Joseph Ritson, An Essay on Abstinence from Animal Food as a Moral, London, 1802, p. 133; F.J. Mouat, Adventures and Researches Among the Andaman Islanders, London, Hurst and Blackett, 1863, p. 7.
John Mandeville, The Book of John Mandeville, translated with an introduction by C.W.R.D. Moseley, Penguin Books, 1983, pp. 136–139.
Iain M. Higgins, Writing East: The ‘Travels’ of Sir John Mandeville, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1997
Sarah Salih, ‘Idols and Simulacra: Paganity, Hybridity and Representation in Mandeville’s Travels’, in Bettina Bildhauer and Robert Mills, eds, The Monstrous Middle Ages, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 2004, pp. 113–133.
Cited in Peter Yapp, ed., The Travellers’ Dictionary of Quotation, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1983, p. 9.
For a detailed exposition of the travel narratives see Zarine Cooper], ‘Early Communication Networks in the Bay of Bengal’, in Archaeology and History: Early Settlements in the Andaman Islands, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2002, pp. 8–31
Cited in Zarine Cooper, ‘Archaeological Evidence of Maritime Contacts: The Andaman Islands’, in H.P. Ray and J.F. Salles, eds, Tradition and Archaeology: Early Maritime Contacts in the Indian Ocean, Manohar, Delhi, 1996 and 1998, pp. 240–245
Christine G. Andrews, ‘The Boucicaut Masters’, Gesta, 41, 1, Artistic Identity in the Late Middle Ages, 2002, pp. 29–38.
Henri Omont, Livres de Merveilles, Marco Polo, Odoric De Pordenone, Mandeville, Hayton, Etc., Volume I, Catala, Paris, 1907
Millard Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berri: the Boucicaut Master, Studies in the History of European Art, Vol. 3, Phaidon, London, 1968, pp. 117–122
Donal Byrne, ‘Manuscript Ruling and Pictorial Design in the Work of the Limbourgs, the Bedford Master, and the Boucicaut Master’, The Art Bulletin, 66, 1, 1984, pp. 118–136
Anthony Pagden, ‘The Peopling of the New World: Ethnos, Race and Empire in the Early-modern World’, in Miriam Eliav-Feldon, Benjamin Isaac and Joseph Ziegler, eds, The Origins of Racism in the West, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009, pp. 292–312.
Charles de Miramon, ‘Noble Dogs, Noble Blood: The Invention of the Concept of Race in the late Middle Ages’, and Valentin Groebner, ‘The Carnal Knowing of a Coloured Body: Sleeping with Arabs and Blacks in the European Imagination, 1300–1550’, in Miriam Eliav-Feldon, Benjamin Isaac and Joseph Ziegler, eds, The Origins of Racism in the West, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009, pp. 200–216
John Block Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1981
Rudolf Wittkower, ‘Marvels of the East: A Study in the History of Monsters’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Insti-tutes 5, 1942, pp. 159–97
Paul Freedman, ‘The Medieval Other: The Middle Ages as Other’, in Timothy S. Jones and David A. Sprunger, eds, Marvels, Monsters, and Miracles: Studies in the Medieval and Early Modern Imaginations, Michigan University Press, Kalamazoo, 2002, 1–24.
Debra H. Strickland, ‘Artists, Audience, and Ambivalence in Marco Polo’s Divisament du monde’, Journal Viator, 36, 2005, pp. 493–529
Edward W. Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1978
Wilton Marion Krogman, ‘Sherlock Holmes as an Anthropologist’, The Scientific Monthly, 80, No. 3, 1955, pp. 155–162.
Romila Thapar, ‘The Image of the Barbarian in Early India’, Comparative Studies in History and Society, 13, 1971, pp. 408–436
Aloka Parasher-Sen, ‘Of Tribes, Hunters and Barbarians: Forest Dwellers in the Mauryan Period’, Studies in History, 14, 2, 1998, pp. 173–192.
David Tomas, Transcultural Space and Transcultural Beings, Westview Press, Boulder, 1996.
This is evident in the public approval and popularity of shipwreck narratives which described instances of cannibalism by sailors for survival. One such case was the shipwreck of Meduse, in 1819, which had a strong impact on the contemporary European imagination. Some of the survivors of the wreck were said to have eaten human flesh which they cut into strips and dried in the sun, and claimed that it was quite palatable. Another such immensely popular narrative was an 1838 publication, Shipwreck of the Stirling Castle, by John Curtis. See Lynette Russell, ‘Mere Trifles and Faint Representations: The Representations of Savage Life Offered by Eliza Fraser’, in Ian J. McNiven, L. Russell and K. Schaffer, eds, Constructions of Colonialism: Perspectives on Eliza Fraser’s Shipwreck, Leicester University Press, London, 1998, pp. 51–62.
A.W. Brian Simpson in his work (Cannibalism and the Common Law, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1985)
Driver, Geography Militant, 2001. This book demonstrates the production and con-sumption of the exploration narratives in the course of the acquisition of the Empire. Also Stafford, ‘Annexing the Landscapes of the Past’, 1990, pp. 67–89; A.W. Crosby], ‘Ecological Imperialism: The Overseas Migration of Western Europeans as a Biological Phenomenon’, in Donald Worster, ed., The Ends of the Earth: Perspectives on Modern Environmental History, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988, pp. 103–117
Satpal Sangwan, ‘From Gentlemen Amateurs to Professionals: Reassessing the Natural Science Tradition in Colonial India, 1780–1840’, in Richard H. Grove, Vinita Damodaran and Satpal Sangwan, eds, Nature and the Orient: The Environmental History of South and Southeast Asia, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1998, pp. 210–236
Felix Padel, The Sacrifice of Human Being: British Rule and the Konds of Orissa, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1995, pp. 144–153
Linda Colley, Captives: Britain, Empire and the World, 1600–1850, Knopf, New York, 2004.
Buzurg Ibn Shariyar, Kitab Ajaib-ul-Hind, translated by G.P.S. Freeman-Grenville, East West, London, 1980.
Ahmad Ibn Majid, Kitab al-Fawaid fi Usul al-Bahr wal-Qawaid, translated by G.R. Tibbetts, Arab Navigation in the Indian Ocean Before the Coming of the Portuguese, Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, London, 1981.
There exists a great deal of epigraphic evidence of ancient Tamil merchants traversing the Bay of Bengal and having a regular and sustained contact with Thailand, Burma, Java, parts of the Indonesian archipelago and China. For epigraphic evidence see N. Karashima, Ancient and Medieval Commercial Activities, 2002. Also see Ranabir Chakravarti, ‘An Enchanting Seascape: Through an Epigraphic Lens’, Studies in History, 20, 2, 2004, pp. 305–315
Vinay Lal, ‘Unanchoring Islands: An Introduction to the Special Issue on “Islands: Waterways, Folkways”’, Emergences: Journal for the Study of Media and Composite Cultures, 10, 2, 2000, pp. 229–240.
Shakespeare’s John of Gaunt expresses this sense of pride perfectly when he calls England: ‘This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle. [...] This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This Fortress built by Nature for herself, Against infection and the hand of war: This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of the less happier lands.’ Cited in Richard II, in Stanley W. Wells and Gary Taylor, eds, The Complete Works of Shakespeare, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988.
Fabian, Time and the Other, 1983. According to him, ‘geopolitics had its foundations in chronopolitics’. John R. Gillis, ‘Taking History Offshore: Atlantic Islands in European Minds, 1400–1800’, in Rod Edmond and Vanessa Smith, eds, Islands in History and Representation, Routledge, London and New York, 2003, pp. 19–31.
David Arnold, ‘“Illusory Riches”: Representations of the Tropical World, 1840–1950’, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 21, 1, 2000, pp. 6–18, p. 7.
This is concurrent with the shift in the characterization of island societies. Death and disease were the two main features of this discourse on the Tropics. See David Arnold, Imperial Medicine and Indigenous Societies, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1998.
Daniel R. Headrick, The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century, Oxford University Press, New York, 1981.
David Arnold, The Problem of Nature: Environment, Culture and European Expansion, Blackwell, Oxford, 1996.
Philip Curtin, The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1780–1850, Macmillan, London, 1965.
H. Reynolds, ‘Racial Thought in Early Colonial Australia’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 20, 1, 1974, pp. 45–53.
C.W.B. Anderson, Report on the Exploration in the North Andaman, Calcutta, 1905. Anderson was the assistant superintendent in the Andaman Commission. C.E. Parkinson, A Forest Flora of the Andaman Islands: An Account of the Trees, Shrubs and Principal Climbers of the Islands, published by M/s. Bishan Singh Mahendra Pal Singh, 23-A, New Connaught Place, Dehradun, 1921; P. Lal, Andaman Islands: A Regional Geography, Calcutta, Archaeological Survey of India, 1976.
N. Bhattacharya, ‘Pastoralists in a Colonial World’, in D. Arnold and R. Guha, eds, Nature, Culture and Imperialism, Essays on the Environmental History of South Asia, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1995, pp. 49–85.
P.C. Dutta, The Great Andamanese: Past and Present, Anthropological Survey of India, Government of India, 1978
J.C. Haughton, ‘Papers Relating to the Aborigines of the Andaman Islands’, Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal, 30, 1861, pp. 251–263
E.H. Man, Aboriginal Inhabitants ofAndamans, Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland by Trubner, London, 1883
Ajay Skaria, ‘Being Jangli: The Politics of Wildness’, Studies in History, 14, 2, 1998, n.s., pp. 193–215.
Niclas Burenhult ‘Deep Linguistic Prehistory, with particular reference to Andamanese’, Working Papers, 45, pp. 5–24, Lund University, Department of Linguistics, Lund, Sweden, 1996 (seen on http://www.ling.lu.se/disseminations/pdf/45/Burenhult.pdf).
Hulme, Colonial Encounters, 1992; Francis Baker et al., eds, Cannibalism and the Colonial World, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998
Brian A.W. Simpson, Cannibalism and the Common Law: The Story of the Tragic Last Voyage of ‘Mignonette’ and the Strange Legal Proceedings to Which it Gave Rise, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1985
Jim McDowell, Hamatsa: The Enigma of Cannibalism on the Pacific Northwest Coast, Ronsdale Press, Vancouver, 1997.
I.M. Lewis, Religion in Context: Cults and Charisma, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996.
The lineage of the discourse on cannibalism in Europe goes back to the earliest times. The ancient Greek myth of the cannibalistic father of the Olympian god Zeus, and the Cyclops in Homer’s Odyssey, directly informs the cursed character of Atreus in Aeschylus’ famous play Agamemnon. Such portrayals took on a distinctive graphic hue following the xenophobic delirium of the Crusades. For instance, there is a miniature of a Tartar eating a human leg and roasting a body on the spit from the thirteenth century found in Matthew of Paris’s Historia Maiora, cited in Charles Zika, ‘Cannibalism and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe: Reading the Visual Images’, History Workshop Journal, 44, 1997, pp. 77–105.
Gananath Obeyesekere, ‘“British Cannibals”: Contemplation of an Event in the Death and Resurrection of James Cook, Explorer’, Critical Inquiry, 18, 1992, pp. 630–654.
Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other, Harper and Row, New York, 1984
Lewis D. Wurgraft, The Imperial Imagination: Magic and Myth in Kipling’s India, Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, 1983
H.E. Martel, ‘Hans Staden’s Captive Soul: Identity, Imperialism, and Rumors of Cannibalism in Sixteenth-Century Brazil’, Journal of World History, 17, 1, 2006, pp. 51–70.
Gananath Obeyesekere, ‘Narratives of the Self: Chevalier Peter Dillon’s Fijian Cannibal Adventures’, in Barbara Creed and Jeanette Hoorn, eds, Body Trade: Captivity, Cannibalism and Colonialism in the Pacific, Routledge, New York and Pluto Press, Sydney, 2001, pp. 69–111.
Bayly, Empire and Information, 1996; Philip B. Wagoner, ‘Precolonial Intellectuals and the Production of Colonial Knowledge’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 45, 2003, pp. 783–814.
Thomas Trautmann, ‘Inventing the History of South India’, in Daud Ali, ed., Invoking the Past: The Uses of History in South Asia, Oxford University Press, London, 1999, pp. 36–54
Eugene F. Irschik, Dialogue and History: Constructing South India, 1795–1895, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1994.
Pratik Chakrabarti, ‘“Neither of Meate Nor Drinke, But What the Doctor Alloweth”: Medicine amidst War and Commerce in Eighteenth-Century Madras’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 80, 2006, pp. 1–38.
My argument here is closer to Bernard Cohn’s (Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1996)
Patricia M.E. Lorcin, Imperial Identities: Stereotyping, Prejudice and Race in Colonial Algeria, I.B. Tauris, London, 1995, Second edition, 1999
Nicholas Dirks, The Scandal of Empire: Indian and the Creation of Imperial Britain, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2006, p. 31.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2010 Aparna Vaidik
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Vaidik, A. (2010). The Island Problematic. In: Imperial Andamans. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230274884_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230274884_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-36605-7
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-27488-4
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)