Indian Uprising of 1857-8

This fascinating book, based on extensive archival research in Britain and India, examines why mutineer-rebels chose to attack prisons and release prisoners, discusses the impact of the destruction of the jails on British penal policy in mainland India, considers the relationship between India and its penal settlements in Southeast Asia, re-examines Britainrs"s decision to settle the Andaman Islands as a penal colony in 1858, and re-evaluates the experiences of mutineer-rebel convicts there. As such this book makes an important contribution to histories of the mutiny-rebellion, British colonial South Asia, British expansion in the Indian Ocean and incarceration and transportation. Coinciding with the 150th anniversary of the mutiny-rebellion, this book will be of interest to academics and students researching the history of colonial India, the history of empire and expansion and the history of imprisonment and incarceration.

Clare Anderson is Senior Lecturer in  the School of Historical Studies, University of Leicester. She is the author of Legible Bodies: Race, Criminality and Colonialism in South Asia (Berg, 1994) and Convicts in the Indian Ocean: Transportation from South Asia to Mauritius, 1815–53 (Macmillan, 2000)