Empires and Colonial Incarceration in the Twentieth Century

ABSTRACT

The international conference held in Lisbon, Portugal in 2016 on Colonial Incarceration in the Twentieth Century: a comparative approach’, provided a platform to engage with ongoing debate on political persecution, confinement and colonial rule in empire. The present papers which resulted from the above-mentioned conference provide valuable insights into recent research on politically motivated punishment and internment in several colonial contexts. Mainly concerned with Africa, they focus on the organisation, discourse and practice regarding political internment in Portuguese, German, British and French empires with reference to Angola, Tanzania, Rhodesia, South Africa, as well as Guyana and New Caledonia. The papers engage with the historiography of political incarceration in prisons and detention camps during the colonial period, from the late nineteenth century to the end of empire, while building upon the remarkable dynamic in scientific research over the last decades. Penal legislation, policies of convict transport and political imprisonment, resettlement, prison regimes, resistance and liberation struggles, counter insurgency, prisoner agency, prisons as cultural spaces and memory are discussed here in different time periods and locations from a variety of multidisciplinary angles.

KEYWORDS:

• Political incarceration
• prisons
• prison camps
• empire

Research on the history of penal legislation, law and order, and prison systems in colonial situations with regard to different regions and continents has been increasingly forthcoming over the last decades (e.g. Morris and Rothman 1995; Neier 1995; Bernault 1999, 2003, 2007; Zinoman 2000, 2001; Harper 2001; Anderson 2005; Pierce and Rao 2006; Brown and Dikötter 2007; Sherman 2009; Gibson 2011). The study of colonial contexts in British, French and Italian empires has unearthed the extensive use of prison camps in Africa, Asia and the Pacific region in empire for the incarceration of (suspected) members of political dissenters and opposition groups, persecuted in metropolitan and colonial contexts, or for ‘enemy combatants’ in the context of colonial warfare (Arnold 1997; Zinoman 2000; LeSueur 2001; Toth 2006; Brown 2010; Brown 2014; Scheipers 2015; Anderson 2016b). The transport and internment of convict labour to and between colonies constituted one of the darker hallmarks of empire, which with time became a tool for the criminalisation and the forced exile of regimes’ perceived political opponents (e.g. Bullard 2000; Machava 2011; Anderson and Maxwell-Stewart 2013; Coates 2013; Thénault 2015; Hynd 2015b; Anderson 2016b). One of the first readers to take stock of the use of incarceration in colonial and post-colonial literature (Harper 2001) showed to what extent penal narratives built upon the ‘functional traces’ that Foucault had identified in his study on the history of imprisonment in Europe (Foucault 1975). However, at the same time, the aforesaid reader also recognised and exposed the limits and shortcomings of such approaches, above all with regard to the study of ‘non-Western’ social, economic, political and cultural spaces, and the need for reconsidering these narratives in local and regional settings elsewhere.

A few issues raised by these publications are of concern here, related to penal policies and practices with regard to politically motivated incarceration discussed in the articles which compose this special issue/dossier. First, to what extent approaches in colonial spaces differed from European contexts in terms of the implementation of penal law with regard to politically motivated incarceration? Second, which factors favoured conditions for the emergence of ‘colonial carceral cycle’ (Harper 2001, 1) in modern empires? Third, how did penal policies in metropolitan societies shape the incarceration of opponents to the established order which resulted in the ‘colonisation of freedom’ in an imperial context? Fourth, how did these systems of social and penal control develop over time in colonial contexts and how were they influenced by the social and political transitions in empire during the twentieth century? Fifth, how did the politics of forced settlement, relocation and confinement and the development of corrective facilities and detention camps in empire engage with the suppression of political dissension and nationalist opposition towards the end of empire? Sixth, to what extent did ‘carceral archipelagos’ (Bernault 2003, 3) emerge in empire in reaction to internal political dissension and opposition, and armed conflict? Seventh, how did political prisoners in colonial settings react to detention and confinement and which resources did they mobilise to cope with their situation? Eighth, how did authorities in empire process and document the punishment and confinement of political prisoners and how did the victims themselves give voice to their experiences? And finally, how did colonial and indigenous societies deal with the victims, fatalities and rehabilitation of incarcerated persons? These and other questions are addressed by the articles in the present dossier, which aim to fill knowledge gaps regarding political incarceration in colonial spaces, above all in Africa.

Following the ground-breaking work by Alan Milner and collaborating authors on prisons in Africa (Milner 1969), the historiography of political incarceration during the colonial period from the late nineteenth century to the end of empire has witnessed a remarkable dynamic. As a result, colonial legal systems, practices of punishment and incarceration, racial segregation and persecution, and human rights abuses thus gained greater visibility (e.g. Bernault 1999, 2003; Peté 2008; Sarkin 2008a, 2008b; Bernault and Deutsch 2015), and Buntman in this issue. Scholars have widely debated the politics of law and order, and colonial violence, perpetrated by the state and private enterprises and institutions. Inspired by Fanon, they probed the class, racial, gendered and ethnic mechanisms and impact of the intrinsic nature of imperial coercion against ‘natives’ and indigènes in its most varied forms, from forced and penal labour to corporal punishment and execution (e.g. Killingray 1986, 2003; Penvenne 1995; Deacon 1996; Diallo 1999, 2005; Konaté 1999; Thioub 1999; Anderson 2000; Bah 2003; Fourchard 2003; Goerg 2003; Gray 2003; Sene 2004; Ash 2006; Kalman 2010; Allinne 2011; Okia 2012; Coates 2013; Hynd 2015a; Brunet-LaRuche 2016; Guthrie 2017, 2018; Monteiro 2018; Tiquet 2018). Another recent line of inquiry has also drawn attention to the role played by settlers and other economic interests in the shaping of the concrete functions and roles of colonial prisons and camps (Scheipers 2015; Furtado 2017).

With regard to Africa, which forms the mainstay of the papers presented here, three geographical areas in particular, stand out in this respect, associated with British and French empires, i.e. South Africa, Kenya and Algeria. South Africa has undoubtedly become one of the best studied cases, not in the least for being the site where the first political detention camps were built on African soil following the Boer War (e.g. Buntman 2003; Singh 2005; Peté 2006; Anderson 2016a). Colonial rule and conflict is also very much present in studies on the MauMau rebellion and colonial repression in Kenya (e.g. Branch 2005; Elkins 2005; Anderson 2005; Klose 2013; Bourgeat 2014), which constitutes another key focus of research on political punishment and confinement in Africa. In addition, an abundant literature has emerged on the case of Algeria, from 1847 to present times, with a strong emphasis on the Algerian war and the end of empire (e.g. LeSueur 2001; Thénault 2012, 2015; Klose 2013). The case of Rhodesia, above all related to anti-colonial resistance and the civil war, has also become a niche in terms of historiographical research on the internment of political detainees (e.g. Alexander 2008, 2011, 2012; Munochiveyi 2014). Other colonial spaces such as those that fell under Portuguese, Belgian, German and Italian rule have over the last decades received increasing – albeit so far limited – attention. One of most contentious issues, the establishment of penal colonies and concentration camps on African soil, resulted in a debate which has concerned itself with political change and armed conflict from the late nineteenth century to the end of empire. Establishing linkages between metropolitan and African contexts, it has above all centred on the case of colonial South Africa as well as camps in former German South West Africa, current Namibia, and Kenya (Kessler 1999; Elkins 2005; Erichsen 2005; Heyningen 2009, 2013; Hyslop 2011; Smith and Stucki 2011; Dedering 2012; Forth 2013; Kössler 2015) and French Algeria (Cornaton 1998; LeSueur 2001; Thénault 2005, 2012; Klose 2013; André 2018). Italian internment camps in Libya and Ethiopia (Walston 1997; Lenci 2004; LaBanca 2005), penal colonies in the Belgian Congo (Hunt 2016) and prison camps and forced relocation in former Portuguese Africa (Tavares 2006; Barros 2009; Lopes 2010; Mester 2016; Cruz and Curto 2017) have also become the subject of historiographical research over the last two decades. Nevertheless, the development of colonial incarceration in the twentieth century in some of the territories of the aforementioned European empires, still remains largely unexplored.

The conference held in Lisbon, Portugal in 2016 on Colonial Incarceration in the Twentieth Century: a comparative approach’, provided a platform to engage with the ongoing debate on political persecution, confinement and colonial rule in empire. Organised by the Aljube Museum and the Institute of Contemporary History (IHC) of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of the Universidade NOVA in Lisbon, it marked the 80th anniversary of the Portuguese colonial Tarrafal prison camp on the island of Santiago in the Cabo Verde Archipelago. The meeting brought together researchers engaging with comparative and transnational perspectives on political incarceration in former British, French, Belgian, German and Portuguese colonial territories in Africa, Asia, Oceania and South America. The present papers which resulted from the above-mentioned conference give valuable insights into recent research on politically motivated punishment and internment in several colonial contexts. Mainly concerned with Africa, they focused on the organisation, discourse and practice regarding political internment in Portuguese, German, British and French empires with reference to Angola, Tanzania, Rhodesia, South Africa, as well as Guyana and New Caledonia.

Fran Buntman opens this special issue with ‘Prison and Law, Repression and Resistance: Colonialism and Beyond’, a broad introduction to theoretical approaches to incarceration which builds upon her previous work on South African political prisoners under the Apartheid regime. This South African sociologist first analyses some of the implications of the relationship between law and prison, arguing that the rule of law is often a means to challenge practices of prison governance and the treatment of inmates. For their part, the prisoners who resist, also contributed to the shaping of prisons and their regimes. Secondly, the author identifies four relationships that assist in the understanding of prisons, law, repression, and resistance: the complex relationship between law and justice; the diversity within and among legal regimes; the need to go beyond binaries such as ‘good and evil’ or ‘victims and villains’; prisons as sites of resistance and challenge in and to colonial and other law. Thirdly, Buntman offers both colonial and contemporary case studies that draw attention to the question of how states create prisons and respond to prisoners’ challenges, with examples of colonial Malaya, French Indochina, apartheid South Africa, Northern Ireland, Egypt, and the contemporary United States. In a more abstract fashion, Buntman also looks at how the state-prison relationship might be theorised, examining the need for universal criteria for the protection of prisoners as highlighted by the Nelson Mandela Rules (2015). The fact that these principles are named after a former political prisoner who transformed imprisonment into an opportunity to build, within prison walls, the post-colonial state, is symbolic of how colonial past, present and future of post-colonial prisons intersect.

In ‘The Penal world in the French Empire: a comparative study of French transportation and its legacy in Guyana and New Caledonia’, Isabelle Merle and Marine Coquet provide an insightful study into the evolution of the only territories of the French empire which were extensively used as penal colonies: New Caledonia, in the Central Pacific, and French Guyana, in Latin America. The article builds upon existing research by a variety of authors, while providing a comparative analysis of policies and their impact in the two colonies, with special reference to the British colonial context in Australia. Despite being a short-lived French penal experiment, which lasted only three decades (1863–1897), the authors show how relations between the penal population and free settler communities in New Caledonia were relatively close. Nevertheless, only very recently the stigmatised memories of families descending from convicts and free settlers in these territories have been unlocked. In the case of French Guyana, its penal colony which operated for more than a century (1852–1953), Merle and Coquet show to what extent the presence of deportees profoundly the landscape, urban development, labour relations, land distribution, the economy, local politics and social practices. However, in the collective memory, the Creolised society associated with the past of slavery maintains a strong presence, which finds expression in restoration of former convict camps. Thus, plural and often rival memories form part of a complex but long silenced colonial past and cannot be understood without taking into account relations between convicts, settlers and indigenous populations.

The deleterious consequences of colonisation and conflict for African populations are analysed by Nancy Rushohora in ‘Graves, houses of pain and execution: memories of the German prisons after the Majimaji War in Tanzania (1904–1908)’. In an archeological and historical case study of Tanzania under German rule in the early 1900s, Rushohora focuses on the locality of memory and the collective trauma associated with atrocities perpetrated by German overlords against local insurgents and populations during the MajiMaji War (1904–1908). By providing an alternative account of incarceration during and after the conflict, the spatial manifestations of collective trauma in southern Tanzania come to the fore. By using pictograms, photographs and local oral memories, together with archaeological surveys, local narratives regarding sites of incarceration and execution are brought to life, revealing the particular dynamics of collective memory of heroes and heroines. Similarly, to other contributions in this issue by Merle and Coquet, and Neto, Rushohora's paper also reflects upon the contradictions of the post-colonial politics of memory and cultural heritage. As in many other former colonial territories of different European empires, both mapping and preserving such sites are still a work in progress and, generally, a controversial one.

As Jocelyn Alexander argues in ‘The Productivity of Political Imprisonment: stories from Rhodesia’, besides places of violence and silence, political prisons are also productive. Based upon written memories, letters and oral histories of Zimbabwean nationalists in detention and guerrillas in maximum security prisons, she reflects on how politics of incarceration are made and unmade in and by prisons. To that end, three cases of ‘productive’ prisons are analysed here starting with Gonakudzingwa, a remote detention site on the South-Eastern border with Mozambique, where ZAPU nationalists managed to develop forms of self-government which included education and formal courts to resolve internal tensions and disputes. The second case involves the letters of Rhodesia's longest serving political prisoner, Maurice Nyagumbo he wrote to his ZANU colleagues in exile with political instructions and advice. Imagining a future nation and influence its making from within prison was definitely part of Nyagumbo's and other political prisoners’ agendas. The third case, Alexander looks at experiences of the soldiers incarcerated in the Khami Prison who survived the campaigns launched jointly by the South African ANC and ZAPU in 1967 and 1968. In this maximum-security prison, secret committees were established by commanders to provide education but also care for soldiers’ minds and bodies. Drawing parallels between these cases, the author underlines the cross-circulation of individuals, practices and ideas between war zones, prisons camps and those in exile, reverberating across liberation struggles in Southern Africa and spilling into the post-colonial world.

The relevance of oral history, emphasised in both Rushohora's and Alexander's papers, also constitutes a key feature of Maria da Conceição Neto's paper on ‘Colonial Incarceration and selective Memories: What is remembered? Who is forgotten? The case of peasant Women deported to São Nicolau (Angola, 1969)’. It focuses upon the individual and collective memories of the deportation of hundreds of peasant women from Bolongongo and Bula Atumba, in Northern Angola, who were incarcerated in the infamous São Nicolau Camp in 1969. Suspected of aiding guerrilla fighters, all women and children in those locations were rounded up by Portuguese authorities and dispatched to a prison camp more than a thousand kilometres away from home. Survivors of the Bolongongo group, interviewed by this Angolan historian, provide a unique perspective on collective punishment and life within Angola's largest prison camp. In the absence of formal accusations and trials, collective incarceration, illustrates that the rule of law was, in Neto's words, ‘a colonial fiction’. Apart from a site the forced displacement, violence bad living conditions in the camp, education and politisation of prisoners took place in São Nicolau. However, after independence the Bolongongo women fell into oblivion. Renamed Bentiaba after the end of empire in 1975, the camp received many political opponents of the nationalist authorities, the continuity and reproduction of colonial mechanisms of punishment and social control.

In ‘The Penal Origins of Colonial Model Villages: from aborted concentration camp to forced resettlement in Angola (1930–1969)’, Bernardo Pinto da Cruz addresses the forcible relocation of over a million Africans to newly built ‘model’ villages. The latter were specially designed by colonial authorities as part of counter insurgence measures and development strategies during the protracted colonial war (1961–1974) waged against African nationalist movements. Exploring the long-term association between confinement and villagisation, the site of Damba initially designed as a penal colony for deported European convicts was reimagined as a penal colony for African convicts in the 1940sand the 1950s. Without prison cells and barbered wire, Damba was the first colonial experiment in racially segregated, forced relocation in villages (aldeamentos) specially designed for the purpose of detribalisation, containment and assimilation. By combining coercion with welfare, Cruz argues that the Damba experiment antedated the introduction counterinsurgency techniques and produced a ‘moderate concentration and arepertoir of late colonial action’. The author analyses another precedent in the form the aborted plan for a concentration camp across the border in Zaire at the beginning of the colonial war, which resulted in an alleged ‘moderate’ form of confinement, i.e. segregated villages built in new chieftancies or regedorias. Whilst ‘lusotropical’ assimilation was the official Portuguese colonial doctrine at the time, the author shows repression and intimidation were inherent to villagisation programmes but also evident in large concentration camps such as São Nicolau and Missombo in late colonial Angola.

Many of the features of Portuguese, British and French late colonialism, with their development strategies and resettlement plans, were echoed by the South African white supremacist regime in the sixties and seventies. In the last article of this issue entitled ‘Contextualising Apartheid at the End of Empire: Repression, “Development” and the Bantustans’, Laura Evans places the policies of relocation and partition of apartheid both in their global context and in the regional dynamics of South African settler colonialism. Contextualising apartheid at the end of the empire, the author argues that the programmes of mass relocation of the black population and Bantustan ‘self-government’ implemented by the Apartheid regime after 1959 were an essential feature of South Africa's late colonial carceral regime. The Nationalist Party's ‘Bantustan System’ and the overlapping narratives that underpinned these policies are analysed in detail and set against the background of the imperial regime's reserve policy, rural planning and villagisation programmes. Embedded in a rhetoric of modernisation and ‘parallel development’, ‘community development’ and ‘self-development’, these programmes were meant to legitimate the Afrikaner nationalist ‘civilising mission’ by refashioning the white settler project in the era of decolonisation, African nationalism as the great majority of African countries gained independence. While reinforcing the authority of ruling Bantustan elites, these resettlement programmes also provoked organised internal resistance and underground movements (such as the ANC and PAC) led by former prisoners, thereby illustrating the failure of segregationist ‘repressive development’.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.