Anand A Yang
University of Washington, United States
My paper examines the ways in which prisoners in some Indian jails were employed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to work in a number of different industries, including handicrafts, in part to equip inmates with skills for their post-penal lives and in part to lessen the government’s costs of their upkeep. My focus will also be on why colonial authorities chose to have prisoners develop certain kinds of products and not others and what these choices reveal about British understandings of the workings of arts and crafts in India.
Biography:
Anand A. Yang, Professor of International Studies and History, is the author of several books, including two recent works, an edited and co-translated volume on Thirteen Months in China and a forthcoming book on Empire of Convicts. His articles have appeared in many national and international journals.