Global Convict Labour Studies in Global Social History
Editor
Marcel van der Linden (International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Editorial Board
Sven Beckert (Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA) Philip Bonner (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa) Dirk Hoerder (University of Arizona, Phoenix, AR, USA) Chitra Joshi (Indraprastha College, Delhi University, India) Amarjit Kaur (University of New England, Armidale, Australia) Barbara Weinstein (New York University, New York, NY, USA)
VOLUME 19
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/sgsh Global Convict Labour
Edited by
Christian Giuseppe De Vito Alex Lichtenstein
LEIDEN | BOSTON Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Global convict labour / edited by Christian Giuseppe De Vito, Alex Lichtenstein. pages cm. -- (Studies in global social history ; volume 19) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-28501-9 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-90-04-28502-6 (e-book : alk. paper) 1. Convict labor--History. 2. Punishment--History. 3. Imperialism--History. I. De Vito, Christian G. II. Lichtenstein, Alexander C.
HV8888.G56 2015 365’.6509--dc23
2015017738
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This book is printed on acid-free paper. Contents
Editors’ Preface vii List of Illustrations xviii List of Tables xix List of Contributors xx
Writing a Global History of Convict Labour 1 Christian G. De Vito and Alex Lichtenstein
PART 1 Genealogies of Convict Labour
1 Contextualising Condemnation to Hard Labour in the Roman Empire 49 Miriam J. Groen-Vallinga and Laurens E. Tacoma
2 Penal Enslavement in the Early Middle Ages 79 Alice Rio
3 Prison and Convict Labour in Early Modern Europe 108 Pieter Spierenburg
4 “An Austrian Cayenne”: Convict Labour and Deportation in the Habsburg Empire of the Early Modern Period 126 Stephan Steiner
5 The Long View of Convict Labour in the Portuguese Empire, 1415–1932 144 Timothy J. Coates
6 Convict Labour Extraction and Transportation from Britain and Ireland, 1615–1870 168 Hamish Maxwell-Stewart vi Contents
PART 2 Coloniality, Ethnicity, Racialism and Convict Labour
7 Labouring for the Raj: Convict Work Regimes in Colonial India, 1836–1939 199 David Arnold
8 The Relegation of Recidivists in French Guiana in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 222 Jean-Lucien Sanchez
9 “… a Weapon of Immense Value”? Convict labour in British Colonial Africa, c. 1850–1950s 249 Stacey Hynd
10 Colonies of Settlement or Places of Banishment and Torment? Penal Colonies and Convict Labour in Latin America, c. 1800–1940 273 Ricardo D. Salvatore and Carlos Aguirre
PART 3 Convict Labour and Governmentality
11 Gender and Convict Labour: The Italian Case in Global Context 313 Mary Gibson
12 Forced Labour in Nazi Concentration Camps 333 Marc Buggeln
13 Historicising the Gulag 361 Lynne Viola
14 “A Parade of Trick Horses”: Work and Physical Experience in the Political Prison 380 Padraic Kenney
15 Rethinking Working Class Struggle through the Lens of the Carceral State: Toward a Labour History of Inmates and Guards 400 Heather Ann Thompson
Bibliography 439 Index of Places 490
Two prisoners…mime the digging of sand. …Their heads are shaven. It is an image of back-breaking and grotesquely futile labour. Each in turn fills a wheelbarrow and then with great effort pushes it to where the other man is digging, and empties it. As a result, the piles of sand never dimin- ish. Their labour is interminable. – Athol Fugard, stage directions, The Island1
At a recent performance of this play at Johannesburg’s Market theatre, the first ten minutes – a duet of grunts of literally backbreaking pain as each prisoner indeed mimed loading and pushing a wheelbarrow of heavy dirt around an other- wise empty stage only to dump it at his partner’s feet – produced an almost unbear- able tension. Here Fugard reveals the “bare life” of penal labour as torture, but not only as inflicted by the prison authorities, who in fact remain invisible throughout the play (and, in the climactic scene, are assumed to be embodied by the audi- ence). Instead, in an endless circular process, the pointless labour is reinforced by the inmates themselves. As Robben Island prisoner Neville Alexander (quoted by Padraic Kenney in his contribution to this volume) remarked about his own expe- rience of labour on “the Island,” “The pointlessness of the whole thing weighs heavily on the prisoners.”2 Fugard himself, in his notebooks, imagined Robben Island as a space defined by “Meaningless Absurd Labor. Punishment. Sisyphus.”3 Padraic Kenney’s essay on political imprisonment in this volume gestures towards this totalistic nexus of labour and punishment, reduced to its Sisyphean essence: “Torture, labour, and exercise: each activity approximated time itself in the prison. They offered an apparent respite from monotony, yet became monotony itself, confined in space and time.” With Fugard’s opening in mind, we might regard the experience of prison labour on Robben island as the apotheosis of this form of penality. But, as Kenney also asks in his medita- tion on the intersection of convict work and political identity: “is prison labour degrading, transformative, or punitive – or all three”? This volume of essays, growing from a two-day workshop held at the International Institute of Social History (iish) in Amsterdam in June 2012, provides the opportunity to explore multiple dimensions of convict labour across time, space, and varieties of state formation. The general aim of the
1 Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona, Statements (New York, 1986), 47. 2 Neville Alexander, Robben Island Dossier, 1964–1974 (Cape Town, 1994), 31. 3 Athol Fugard, Notebooks, 1960–1977 (New York, 1984), 212. viii Editors’ Preface conference was to bring scholars together in a common endeavor that would begin to develop a global and comparative history of convict labour across many of the regimes of punishment that have appeared from the 16th century to the present, including galleys, penal servitude, corvée, transportation, work- houses and factories, leased convict labour, chain gangs, concentration camps, political imprisonment directed at individuals, and state or military labour camps. As this ambitious list of topic suggests, forced labour has been an important component of penality in many eras, in diverse geographic locales, and in every type of state regime. Yet only rarely has it been considered in global, transnational, or comparative frameworks. With a few noticeable exceptions, scholars have tended to focus on the peculiarities of each regime of punishment; a series of independent sub-disciplines have thus emerged, e.g. the history of the penitentiary, of the Nazi concentration camps, or of transporta- tion to different destinations. The iish conference aimed to overcome this frag- mentation. By looking at convict labour as a common feature of diverse regimes of punishment across space and time, we sought to highlight their co-existence in specific periods and contexts, to stress the dynamic and interconnected nature of the various regimes of punishment, and to link their emergence and decline to particular moments in the evolution of the global political economy. Secondly, and perhaps somewhat less successfully, the conference attempted to overcome the Eurocentric and methodologically nationalist attitude of much of the general theories and historiographies of the relationship between punishment and society. In the opening bibliographic chapter, we attempt to rectify this in our synthesis of the existing literature on convict labour in an effort to provide “an itinerary through time, space, and different regimes of punishment.” In doing so, we question the “unwarranted teleology of penal reform and modernization that is assumed to move progressively towards stable forms of incarceration and rehabilitation, and away from brutality, unmitigated punishment, and naked coercion or enslavement” entailed by a blinkered focus on European penal developments. Moreover, those develop- ments themselves proved deeply enmeshed with a global history in which Europe was but one player. Accordingly, we asked participants, even (or espe- cially) those still working within the boundaries of the nation-state, to keep in mind comparative and entangled histories, trans-national and trans-local con- nections, even while they highlighted the distinctive nature of the national or typological form of convict labour in their area of expertise. To this end, we arranged the conference itself – and the papers that follow in this volume – around three broad thematic approaches to these problems. First, in an effort to understand the deep historical linkages between punish- ment and work in myriad social contexts, we asked some scholars to address
4 We use this term with caution, but believe in this case it serves our purposes as we want to consider how colonial punishment had implications that go well beyond those captured in the term “colonialism.” As a term, “coloniality” also has particular resonance in Latin American studies, and thus helps us conjoin Africa, Asia, and Latin America in our concep- tualization of “colonial” penality and its relationship to modernity. For a recent defense of the term by one of its main exponents, see Walter D. Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking (Princeton, 2012, 2nd ed.), preface. See also Mabel Moraña, Enrique Dussell, and Carlos A. Jauregui, eds., Coloniality at Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate (Durham, nc, 2008). Ricardo D. Salvatore, “The Postcolonial in Latin America and the Concept of Coloniality: A Historian’s Point of View,” A Contra Corriente: A Journal on Social History and Literature in Latin America 8 (Fall 2010): 332–48, offers a balanced assessment of some of the concept’s strengths and weaknesses. For a more searching critique of the term see Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley, 2005), introduction. 5 See, for example, Taylor Sherman, State Violence and Punishment in India, 1919–1956. (London, 2009.) 6 Clare Anderson, Convicts in the Indian Ocean: Transportation from South Asia to Mauritius, 1815–1853 (Basingstoke, 2000); Clare Anderson, Subaltern Lives: Biographies of Colonialism in the Indian Ocean, World, 1790–1920 (Cambridge, 2012).
7 Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, Ma, 1982).
Robben Island, of course, is another exception that proves the rule; many other sites of deportation, exile, imprisonment, and brutal labour extraction remain unacknowledged relics of what is imagined to be a bygone age, like the rotting convict hulks that once littered the River Thames. But in his exploration of the far-flung abandoned remnants of the Gulag, journalist Ian Frazier remarks that what struck him the most amidst the prison camps strung along the remote Topolinskaya highway in Siberia was “the place’s overwhelming aura of absence. The deserted prison camp just sat there – unexcused, untorndown, unexplained. During its years of operation,” he observed of one camp, “it had been a secret and in some sense it still was… I thought that this camp, and all the others along the road,” Frazier concluded, “needed large historical markers in front of them, with names, dates, and details.”8 We hope this collection of essays will begin to reconstruct, at least metaphorically, some of those “histori- cal markers” for a global history of convict labour. A collection of essays is necessarily a collective endeavor, so in closing we would like to offer our sincere thanks to some of the many people who made this one possible. Marcel van der Linden originally envisaged the idea of a conference on convict labour, put us in contact, and made sure generous financial support was made available by the iish, where the conference was convened on 13th-14th June 2012. Astrid Verburg and Ineke Kellij’s highly pro- fessional and kind collaboration made the conference fruitful and enjoyable. Of course, this volume depended on the dynamic interchange that took place at the conference itself, which not only included the contributors to the pages that follow, but several scholars whose work does not appear in this volume. That is no reflection on their lively contributions to the discussion in 2012, which made an impact on our thinking as we conducted the editorial work. Accordingly, we would like to thank Clare Anderson, Klaus Muhlhahn and Robert Perkinson, for their participation and insight. Heather Thompson’s chapter originally appeared, in a slightly different ver- sion but with the same title, in Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, Volume 8, no. 3, 15–45, copyright 2011. It is republished in this volume by permission of the copyright holder, Duke University Press
8 Ian Frazier, Travels in Siberia (New York, 2010), 429.
5.1 O depósito de degredados em Angola, 1910 159 5.2 Diversos artefactos manufacturados nas officinas do Depósito de Degredado, 1915 161 6.1 No. of Convicts transported from Britain and Ireland 1660–1870 180 6.2 No. of charges brought per convict per year (males) and Distribution of acquit- tals and reprimands (males) 189 6.3 No. of lashes awarded per convict and days solitary confinement (males) 191 6.4 Charges brought against male convicts per man on strength (5 year moving average) and mechanics’ wages 192 6.5 Days spent in road parties or chain gang per year per man on strength (3 year moving average) 193 8.1 Map of French Guyana 227 14.1 B-section prisoners in Robben Island 380 List of Tables
5.1 Estimated totals of those sentenced to exile in the Portuguese world, 1200–1755 146 5.2 Estimated totals of those sentenced to exile in the Portuguese world, 1756–1932 156 6.1 Number of convicts transported in the British empire 1615–1937 169 6.2 Conduct record sample sizes 186 6.3 Charges brought against male convicts 187 6.4 Lashes received per male convict 188 7.1 Percentage of those convicts sentenced to imprisonment with labour employed on different tasks, 1875 205 List of Contributors
Carlos Aguirre (University of Oregon) is Professor of History at the University of Oregon. He obtained his ma at the Universidad Católica del Perú and his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of four books: Agentes de su propia libertad. Los esclavos de Lima y la desintegración de la esclavitud, 1821–1854 (Lima, 1993), Breve historia de la esclavitud en el Perú. Una herida que no deja de sangrar (Lima, 2005), The Criminals of Lima and their Worlds: The Prison Experience (1850–1935) (Durham, 2005), and Dénle duro que no siente. Poder y transgresión en el Perú republicano (Lima, 2008). He has also co-edited seven books on banditry, crime, prisons, and intellectuals, and Marxism, among other publications. He was a MacArthur Fellow at the University of Minnesota (1990–1996) and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow in 1999. He is currently working on a project on intellectu- als and military nationalism in Peru (1968–1975).
David Arnold (University of Warwick) is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Warwick; he previously taught at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. A founder mem- ber of the Subaltern Studies group, he has written extensively on the history of disease and medicine in colonial India, on crime and policing, environmental history and the history of science. Among his main works are Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India (1993), Science, Technology and Medicine in Colonial India (2000), and Gandhi (2001). His most recent book is Everyday Technology: Machines and the Making of India’s Modernity’, published in 2013.
Marc Buggeln (Humboldt University, Berlin) is Assistant Professor at the History Department of the Humboldt University in Berlin. He is editor of the mailing list HSozKult and the journals Sozial. GeschichteOnline and WerkstattGeschichte. Publications: Arbeit & Gewalt (Göttingen, 2009); Das System der KZ-Außenlager (Bonn, 2012); Slave Labour in Nazi Concentration Camps (Oxford, 2014).
Timothy J. Coates (College of Charleston) is Professor of History at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina, usa. He obtained his Ph.D in early modern global history at the University of Minnesota, specialising in the Portuguese Empire, and has taught at Brown University and the Universidade de Lisboa. He has received grants from the List of Contributors xxi
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Luso-American Development Foundation, the Fundação Oriente, and the American Institute of Indian Studies to conduct research in Portugal and India. He is the author of Convicts and Orphans: Forced and State Sponsored Colonization in the Portuguese Empire, 1550–1755; a study on internal exile to Castro Marim in Portugal, and most recently a monograph on forced labor in Angola from 1880–1932. He has pub- lished numerous articles on his work in various academic journals, and orga- nized several international conferences in Charleston on Portuguese themes. He recently translated Antonil’s 1711 classic economic work on colonial Brazil, which was published as Brazil at the Dawn of the Eighteenth Century, and is cur- rently working on the first English translation of Diogo do Couto’s 1612 master- piece, O Soldado Prático.
Christian G. De Vito (iish and University of Leicester) is Research Associate at the University of Leicester on the erc-funded project The Carceral Archipelago: Transnational circulations in global perspective, 1415– 1960 (P.I. Prof. Clare Anderson) and Honorary Fellow at the iish. He has pub- lished monographs and articles on the social history of the prison and psychiatry, on the history of social movements, on labour history and global history. He is member of the editorial board of the International Social History Association (isha) newsletter and of the International association Strikes and Social Conflict, member of the Board of directors of the Societá Italiana di Storia del Lavoro (sislav), co-chair of the Labour network of the European Social Science History Conference (esshc), and co-chair of the “Free and Unfree Labour” working group of the European Labour History Network (elhn).
Mary Gibson (City University of New York) is Professor of History at John Jay College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her publications include Prostitution and the State in Italy (1986), Born to Crime: Cesare Lombroso and the Origins of Biological Criminology (2002), and “Global Perspectives on the Birth of the Prison,” American Historical Review (2011). She has translated, with Nicole Hahn Rafter, the two classic works of Lombroso: Criminal Man (2006) and Criminal Woman, the Prostitute and the Normal Woman (2004). She is presently writing a book on the history of Italian prisons.
Miriam J. Groen-Vallinga (Leiden University) is PhD-student in Ancient History at Leiden University. She holds degrees in classics and ancient history from Leiden and is specifically interested in Roman
Stacey Hynd (University of Exeter) is the Lecturer in African History at the University of Exeter. She completed her doctorate on capital punishment in British colonial Africa at the University of Oxford in 2008, and lectured in African and World History at the University of Cambridge. Her primary research interests are histories of law, crime and pun- ishment in Africa, with wider interests in gender, state violence and warfare. Her current research focuses on British imperial criminal law, the develop- ment of human rights in Ghana, and histories of child combatants in modern African warfare.
Padraic Kenney (Indiana University) is Professor of History and International Studies at Indiana University, He is the author of, among others, Rebuilding Poland: Workers and Communists, 1945–1950 (1997); A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe, 1989 (2002); The Burdens of Freedom: Eastern Europe Since 1989 (2006); and 1989: Democratic Revolutions at the Cold War’s End (2010). He is currently writing a history of political incarceration in the modern world.
Alex Lichtenstein (Indiana University) is associate professor at Indiana University, Bloomington, usa. A historian of labour and race relations in the u.s. South, he has more recently turned his attention to the history of South Africa under apartheid. He is the author of Twice the Work of Free Labour: The Political Economy of Convict Labour in the New South (Verso), one of the first books to make the study of convict labour central to southern history, and many articles about the history of convict leas- ing and chain gangs in the United States.
Hamish Maxwell-Stewart (University of Tasmania) is a Professor in the School of Humanties at the University of Tasmania. He is author of several books including Closing Hell’s Gates (Allen and Unwin, 2008) which won the Margaret Scott award, 2009 and Kay Daniels award 2010 and co-author of Chain Letter: Narrating Convict Lives (Melbourne University Press, 2001), winner of the 2004 Margaret Scott award. His research interests include
Alice Rio (King’s College London) is Senior Lecturer in Medieval European History at King’s College London. She is the author of Two Merovingian Legal Handbooks: The Formularies of Angers and Marculf (Liverpool, 2008) and Legal Practice and the Written Word: Frankish Formulae, c. 500–1000 (Cambridge, 2009). She is currently writing a book on early medieval slavery and unfreedom.
Ricardo D. Salvatore (Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires) is Professor of History at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina and at Florida International University, Miami. He is author of: Wandering Paysanos. State Order and Subaltern Experience in Buenos Aires during the Rosas Era (Duke University Press, 2003); Imágenes de un imperio. Estados Unidos y las formas de representación de América Latina (Sudamericana, 2006); and Subalternidad, Derechos y Justicia Penal (Gedisa, 2010). He has coedited a num- ber of books, among them The Birth of the Penitentiary in Latin America (University of Texas Press 1996); Crime and Punishment in Latin America (Duke University Press 2001); Culturas Imperiales: (Beatriz Viterbo Editora, 2005); Los Lugares del Saber (Beatriz Viterbo, 2006); and El delito y el orden en perspectiva histórica (Prohistoria 2013). He has published numerous articles in English and Spanish on the history of crime, criminal justice, criminology, and prisons in Latin America.
Jean-Lucien Sanchez (ehess, Paris) holds a Ph.D. in history from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris). His thesis, defended on December 3, 2009, is titled “The relegation of recidivists in French Guiana. Les relégués in the colonial prison of Saint-Jean-du- Maroni, 1887–1953.” Jean-Lucien Sanchez is research officer for Historical Studies at the French Department of Justice (dap/pmj5), member of the editorial board of the website Criminocorpus and associated researcher at the Centre de Recherche Sociologique sur le Droit et les Institutions Pénales (cesdip umr 8183). He is author of: A perpétuité. Relégués au bagne de Guyane (Vendémiaire, 2013).
Pieter Spierenburg (Erasmus University, Rotterdam and niod, Amsterdam) is professor emeritus of Erasmus University. He has written extensively on the history of punishment, crime and violence. Presently, he is engaged in explor- ing the global history of homicide and organized murder as well as leading the
Stephan Steiner (Sigmund Freud University, Vienna) is an Austrian historian teaching as Senior Lecturer at Sigmund Freud University Vienna. He has published several books and a wide range of articles on questions of extreme violence, including a study on the persecution of Carinthian Protestants, 1734–1736 and one on deportations in the Habsburg monarchy in the early modern period and its European contexts. He is the edi- tor of the political writings of Jean Améry and has worked on the Shoah and the genocide in Rwanda.
Laurens E. Tacoma (Leiden University) is lecturer in Ancient History at Leiden University, with a special interest in Roman social history. His current research concerns Roman mobility and migration; a monograph entitled Moving Romans will appear soon at O.U.P., and several articles and an edited volume are in preparation.
Heather Ann Thompson (University of Michigan) is professor of History in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, the Residential College and Department of History, University of Michigan. She writes on the history of the American justice system as well as current justice policy. She has received several awards and fellowships for her scholar- ship on the carceral state and has consulted on a number of documentaries. Recently Thompson was named to a National Academy of Sciences panel to study the causes and consequences of high rates of incarceration in the United States and she will soon publish the first comprehensive history of the Attica Prison Rebellion of 1971 and its legacy for Pantheon Books.
Lynne Viola (University of Toronto) is University Professor and Professor of History at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Peasant Rebels Under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance (Oxford University Press, 1996) and The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin’s Special Settlements (Oxford University Press, 2007).
Christian G. De Vito and Alex Lichtenstein
This bibliographic essay seeks to contribute to the understanding of convict labour from a global and long-term perspective. First the conditions leading to the emergence and transformation of convict labour are addressed by framing this coercive labour form within broader classifications of labour relations and by discussing its connection with the problem of governmentality. Subsequently, an overview of the literature is undertaken in the form of a journey across time, space, and different regimes of punishment. Finally, the limitations of the avail- able literature are discussed, the possibility of a longer-term (pre-1500) and global history of convict labour is considered, and some theoretical and meth- odological approaches are suggested that could favour this task. Whatever their political perspective, historians of labour and work tend to associate the evolution of labour relations with the teleology of freedom. Various coercive labour practices – slavery, serfdom, indenture, vassalage – are regarded as giving way over time to free but commodified forms of labour, par- ticularly with the expansion of capitalist modernity, free contract, and wage work. Yet in nearly every society, and in nearly every historical era, enforced work has in fact been deployed as a form of penal and/or administrative con- trol of selected populations. Taking this perpetual nexus of labour and penality as its framework, this chapter examines the historically ubiquitous institution of convict labour from both a global and long-term perspective, and its place within a constellation of forms of unfree labour linked to the development of modernity. It does so in three main ways, corresponding to three mutually reinforcing sections of the bibliographic survey that follows. In the first section, we frame convict labour within broader classifications of labour relations, in order to constitute penal work as a category of historical
1 A slightly different version of this chapter has been published, under the same title, in International Review of Social History, 58:2 (August 2013), 285–325. Draft versions of this chap- ter were discussed during the workshop on “Global Convict Labour” held at the International Institute of Social History (iish – Amsterdam, 13–14 June 2012), at a staff meeting at the iish, and with individual experts. We would like to thank the following scholars for the comments, critiques, and suggestions they provided: Carlos Aguirre, Clare Anderson, Touraj Atabaki, Rossana Barragan, Stefano Bellucci, Aad Blok, Marc Buggeln, Timothy J. Coates, Francesca Di Pasquale, Miko Flohr, Guy Geltner, Miriam J. Groen-Vallinga, Karin Hofmeester, Stacey Hynd, Padraic Kenney, Margo De Koster, Marcel van der Linden, Jan Lucassen, Hamish Maxwell- Stewart, Klaus Mühlhahn, Robert Perkinson, Jean-Lucien Sanchez, Willem van Schendel, and Lynne Viola.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004285026_002
Classifying Convict Labour
Convict labour can best be understood as a phenomenon located at the cross- roads of two dynamic social processes: the commodification of labour and the enforced social definition of the “convict” as a person who has forfeited his or her right to freedom. Examination of the first process reminds us that convict
2 Karin Hofmeester and Christine Moll-Murata, eds., The Joy and Pain of Work: Global Attitudes and Valuations, 1500–1650, International Review of Social History, 56, Special Issue 19 (2011). The special issue is dedicated to the Global Collaboratory project. See in particular the intro- duction by Karin Hofmeester and Christine Moll-Murata (1–24). The taxonomy referred to in the text is published as Figure 1, 6; the definitions of labour relations are published in the appendix, 21–23. See also the website:
that have been summarized by Marc Buggeln: (a) slavery is a system of labour in which the slave has a value for their private owner, while the concentration camp prisoner is the inmate of a state organization and is deprived of any (or a large part of his/her) value; (b) ex-concentration camp prisoners who defined themselves as slaves used the term in a non-economic, symbolic way; (c) much of the debate on the question “has rested on the absolute positioning of American slavery as the paradigmatic slave system for all times,” while from a global and long-term perspective “slavery has proved to be an extremely multi-layered phenomenon that has shown itself capable of adapting to a wide variety of societal forms throughout history.” In other words, even if one accepts that concentration camp prisoners were slaves, the question remains of what kind of slaves they were. For these reasons, Buggeln has pointed out that “the dangers implicit in this form of comparison […] outweigh the benefits” and Rüdiger Hachtmann has stressed that “the term [slavery] is loaded with various connotations in historical research” and “cannot as a category really do justice to the specific forms of discrimination that the various groups of labourers compelled to unfree work deployments in German industry were subjected to during World War II.” See Marc Buggeln, “Were Concentration Camp Prisoners Slaves?: The Possibilities and Limits of Comparative History and Global Historical Perspectives,” International Review of Social History, 53 (2008), 101–129 (citations respectively on pp. 116, 116, and 115). See also Wolfgang Sofsky, The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp (Princeton, 1997); Rüdiger Hachtmann, “Fordism and Unfree Labour: Aspects of the Work Deployment of Concentration Camp Prisoners in German Industry between 1941 and 1944,” International Review of Social History, 55 (2010), 485–513 (citations on pp. 488–489). 5 Marcel van der Linden, Workers of the World (Leiden, 2008). See especially chapter two, and particularly 18–20 and 34.
6 Clare Anderson, Subaltern Lives: Biographies of Colonialism in the Indian Ocean, World, 1790–1920 (Cambridge, 2012). See also Ulbe Bosma, “European Colonial Soldiers in the Nineteenth Century: Their Role in White Global Migration and Patterns of Colonial Settlement,” Journal of Global History, 4 (2009), 317–336. On 319 the author makes reference to the cases of Siberia and Australia and explicitly points to the fact that “In the early phases of colonialism, soldiers and convicts were, if not the cheapest, certainly the most easily deployed source of labour in the extreme circumstances of a frontier.” The two groups thus came to play a pivotal role as “primers of the pump for mass migration” and in preparing the ground for other forms of labour.
7 Anderson, Subaltern Lives. On subjectivity and the memory of imprisonment and forced labour, see also Jehanne M. Gheith and Katherine R. Jolluck, Gulag Voices: Oral Histories of Soviet Incarceration and Exile (New York, 2011); on the African-American experience see Lawrence Gellert, Negro Songs of Protest (New York, 1936); Bruce Jackson, Wake Up, Dead Man: Afro-American Work Songs from Texas Prisons (Cambridge, ma, 1972); and Howard B. Franklin, Prison Literature in America: The Victim as Criminal and Artist (New York, 1989). 8 However, an extended literature has discussed the need to overcome a rigid distinction between “free” and “unfree” labour and has even questioned the category of “free labour.” See especially Gyan Prakash, “Colonialism, Capitalism and the Discourse of Freedom,” in Samir Amin and Marcel van der Linden, eds., “Peripheral” Labour? Studies in the History of Partial Proletarianization (Cambridge, 1997), 9–25; Tom Brass and Marcel van der Linden, eds., Free and Unfree Labour: The Debate Continues (Bern, 1997); Rana P. Behal, “Changing Paradigm of South Asian Labour Historiography,” in Marcel van der Linden and Eva Himmelstoss, eds., Labour History beyond Borders: Concepts and Explorations (Vienna, 2009), 63–78; van der Linden, Workers of the World.
9 See for instance Philippe Combessie, Sociologie de la prison (Paris, 2001); Kerry Carrington and Russell Hogg, Critical Criminology: Issues, Debates, Challenges (Portland, 2002). 10 Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York, 2010).
11 Think for instance of the many cases, especially in non-Western European contexts, where labour was imposed on individuals through extrajudicial practice within house- holds, communities, and guilds. Another case is that of the “free convicts” in the late 1950s and 1960s Chinese laogai, that is, individuals who had formally completed their sentence but were prevented from leaving the camps and forced to work in special brigades under the jiu ye system of “job placement.” 12 The key reference for this approach is still Georg Rusche and Otto Kirchheimer, Punishment and Social Structure (New York, 1939). The thesis had already been antici- pated in Georg Rusche, “Arbeitsmarkt und Strafvollzug. Gedanken zur Soziologie der Strafjustiz,” Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (1933), 63–78. For more recent studies restating this materialist explanation, see Dario Melossi and Massimo Pavarini, Carcere e fabbrica: alle origini del sistema penitenziario (XVI–XIX secolo) (Bologna, 1977) [English translation: The Prison and the Factory: Origins of the Penitentiary System (London, 1981)]; Ivan Jankovich, “Labor Market and Imprisonment,” Crime and Social Justice, 8 (1977), 17–31; Martin Killias and Christian Grandjean, “Chômage et taux d’incarcération: l’exemple de la Suisse de 1890 à 1941,” Déviance et société, 10:4 (1986), 309–322; Bernard Laffargue and Thierry Godefroy, “La prison républicaine et son environment économique. Population en prison et marché du travail (1870–1914),” Déviance et société, 14:1 (1990), 39–58.
13 Michel Foucault, “Governmentality,” in Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, eds., The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (Chicago, 1991), 87–104. See especially Foucault’s useful definition on p. 102. 14 See Burchell et al., The Foucault Effect, 5.
A Global Survey of Convict Labour
One of the earliest deployments of convict labour came in maritime transport and naval combat. Yet, contrary to a widespread popular image, no convict rowers were chained to the oars of the galleys during the Roman empire – with the exception of Ptolemaic Egypt – and their use was also largely limited aboard early fourteenth-century Venetian and fifteenth-century Florentine galleys and in the navy of the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in the
15 Taylor C. Sherman, “Tensions of Colonial Punishment: Perspectives on Recent Developments in the Study of Coercive Networks in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean,” History Compass, 7:3 (2009), 659–677, 661. 16 For a similar approach, see Pieter Spierenburg, The Prison Experience: Disciplinary Institutions and Their Inmates in Early Modern Europe (New Brunswick and London, 1991), Ch. 11, 261–276.
17 On convict labour aboard galleys see Paul Walden Bamford, “The Procurement of Oarsmen for French Galleys, 1660–1748,” The American Historical Review, 65:1 (1959), 31–48; Lionel Casson, “Galley Slaves,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, 97 (1966), 35–44; Michael E. Mallet, The Florentine Galleys in the Fifteenth Century (Oxford, 1967); Ian A.A. Thompson, “A Map of Crime in Sixteenth- Century Spain,” Economic History Review, 21:2 (1968), 244–267; Henry Kamen, “Galley Service and Crime in Sixteenth-Century Spain,” Economic History Review, 22:2 (1969), 304–305; Lionel Casson, Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World (Princeton, 1971); Paul W. Bamford, Fighting Ships and Prisons: The Mediterranean Galleys of France in the Age of Louis XIV (London, 1974); Leo Th. Lehmann, Galleys in the Netherlands (Amsterdam, 1984); Lionel Casson, The Ancient Mariners: Seafarers and Sea Fighters of the Mediterranean in Ancient Times (Princeton, 1991); Colin Imber, “The Navy of Suleyman the Magnificent,” Archivum Ottomanicum, 6 (1980), 211–282; José Luis de las Heras Santos, “Los galeotes de los Austrias: la penalidad al servicio de la Armada,” Historia Social, 6 (Winter, 1990), 127–140; John S. Morrison and Robert Gardiner, eds., The Age of the Galley: Mediterranean Oared Vessels since Pre-classical Times (London, 1995); John F. Guilmartin, Galleons and Galleys (London, 2002); Luca Lo Basso, Uomini da remo. Galee e galeotti del Mediterraneo in età moderna (Milan, 2003); Massimo Capulli, Le Navi della Serenissima – La “Galea” di Lazise (Venice, 2003); Anthony Gorman, “Regulation, Reform and Resistance in the Middle Eastern Prison,” in Frank Dikötter and Ian Brown, eds., Cultures of Confinement: A History of the Prison in Africa, Asia, and Latin America (Ithaca, 2007), 95–146; Manuel Martinez Martinez, Los forzados de marina en la España del siglo XVIII (1700–1775) (Almería, 2011). 18 See especially: Bamfort, “The Procurement.”
In order to counter the shortage of manpower, in the mid-1680s the service was reorganized by the Secretary of State for the Navy, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, with 4,870 new forçats and 1,401 new slaves joining the forty galleys of the French fleet. By the early eighteenth century, however, galleys were phased out in favour of the technical superiority and the higher firepower of naval sailing ships. When the Corps des Galères was officially abolished in 1748 “its few remaining vessels were essentially prison hulks for the accommodation of convicts who slept aboard, and usually worked ashore by day.”19 The hulks harboured in the London docks in the same period had the same function. A similar trajectory of galley service can be observed in the Islamic empires. As Anthony Gorman has argued, in the sixteenth century, penal or forced labour (sukhri or tashkir) was employed especially by the Ottomans “when the need for oarsmen saw service in the galleys (kürek) commonly prescribed as a punishment.”20 Three centuries later, however, sentence to the galley had been transformed into work in agriculture and small-scale industry. Together with free labour, this “employment with chained feet” played a significant role in Muhammad Ali’s programme of “modernization” in early 19th century Egypt. Thus the sectorial deployment of penal labour often shifted according to shifts in political economy. Besides galley service and public works, penal servitude developed in the early modern period especially in the form of trans- portation to aid in populating and securing newly acquired imperial territory.21
19 Bamford, “The Procurement,” 47. 20 Gorman, “Regulation, Reform and Resistance,” 118. Further information in the text are also taken from this essay. 21 On early modern transportation in the Portuguese and Spanish empires see: Ruth Pike, “Penal Labor in Sixteenth-Century Spain: The Mines of Almadén,” Societas – A Review of Social History, 3 (1973), 193–206; idem, “Penal Servitude in the Spanish Empire: Presidio Labor in the Eighteenth Century,” The Hispanic American Historical Review, 58:1 (1978), 21–40; idem, Penal Servitude in Early Modern Spain (Madison, 1983); E. Troconis de Veracoechea, Historia de las cárceles en Venezuela, 1600–1890 (Caracas, 1983); Maria A. Lima Cruz, “Exiles and Renegades in Early Sixteenth Century Portuguese India,” Indian Economic and Social History Review, 23:3 (1986), 249–262; Fernando Picó, El día menos pen- sado: historia de los presidiarios en Puerto Rico, 1793–1993 (Rió Piedras, 1994); Maria Fernanda García de los Arcos, Forzados y reclutas: Los criollos novohispanos en Asia (1756–1808) (Mexico, 1996); Timothy J. Coates, “Crime and Punishment in the Fifteenth- Century Portuguese World: The Transition from Internal to Imperial Exile,” in Donald Kagay and L.J. Andrew Villalon, eds., The Final Argument: The Imprint of Violence on Society in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (London, 1998), 119–139; Gabriel Haslip- Viera, Crime and Punishment in Late Colonial Mexico City, 1692–1810 (Albuquerque, 1999); Michael L. Bush, Servitude in Modern Times (Cambridge, 2000); Timothy J. Coates, Convicts and Orphans: Forced and State-Sponsored Colonizers in the Portuguese Empire, 1550–1755
The rise of the Iberian empires typically involved a shift from presidios along the borders of Spain and Portugal to locations overseas. In the case of Portugal, dealt with in detail in Timothy J. Coates’ chapter in this volume, havens and exile locales at home were phased out (with the exception of Castro Marim) and at least 50,000 convicts and sinners were forced to relocate, largely over- seas, in the early modern period.22 Their destinations were mainly the new colonies in Goa, coastal West Africa (Azores, Madeira, Principe, São Tomé, and Cape Verde) and later, between 1740 and 1822, Pará, Maranhão, and Santa Catarina in Brazil. In the Spanish case, the mercury mines of Almadén, the maritime arsenals of Cartagena, La Carraca (Cadiz), and El Ferrol (Galicia) and the Northern African presidios of Oran, Ceuta and Melilla, Peñón de Vélez, and Peñón de Alhucemas continued to host presidiarios involved in the heavy manual work of constructing, repairing, and maintaining roads, canals, fortifi- cations, and other military facilities. To these, the Filipino presidios and then increasingly the Spanish American presidios were added. Punishment, trans- portation, and penal labour then all played instrumental roles in the capacity of the Iberian empires to expand their global frontiers, gain access to economic resources, and extend their political and military reach in this period.23
(Stanford, 2001); Geraldo Pieroni and Timothy J. Coates, De couto do pecado á vila do sal: Castro Marim, 1550–1850 (Lisbon, 2002); Timothy J. Coates, “The Early Modern Portuguese Empire: A Commentary on Recent Studies,” The Sixteenth Century Journal, 37:1 (2006), 83–90; idem, “European Forced Labor in the Early Modern Era,” in David Eltis and Stanley L. Engerman, eds., The Cambridge World History of Slavery (Cambridge, 2011), vol. III, 631–649; Clare Anderson and Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, “Convict Labour and the Western Empires, 1415–1954,” in Robert Aldrich and Kirsten McKenzie, eds., The Routledge History of Western Empires (London, 2013), 102–117. On the penal servitude of Christians caught by North African pirates, see Ellen Friedman, “North African Piracy on the Coasts of Spain in the Seventeenth Century: A New Perspective on the Expulsion of the Moriscos,” International History Review, 1:1 (1979), 1–16. For a broader discussion of piracy and early modern empire, see Linda Colley, Captives: Britain, Empire, and the World, 1600–1850 (Pimlico, 2003). The question of the way empires have been populated has been central in the “New Imperial Histories,” although these studies have rarely addressed convict labour directly. For an introduction see Frederick Cooper and Ann L. Stoler, eds., Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1997); Ilya Gerasimov et al., “In Search of a New Imperial History,” Ab Imperio, 1 (2005), 33–56; Kathleen Wilson, “Old Imperialisms and New Imperial Histories: Rethinking the History of the Present,” Radical History Review, 95 (2006), 211–234; Stephen Howe, ed., The New Imperial Histories Reader (London, 2008). 22 Coates, Convicts and Orphans; Pieroni and Coates, Castro Marim. 23 This argument complements that made by Robin Blackburn in The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492–1800 (London, 1998).
Stephan Steiner’s chapter sheds light on the less studied experience of convict labour and transportation in the Habsburg empire, while research on the Dutch convict transportation system has shown how this played an inte- gral role in linking distant imperial outposts. In the latter case, however, most traffic in forced labour was overseen by a private entity, the Dutch East India Company (voc), which controlled the Indian Ocean flow of convicts between Batavia and the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa. As Kerry Ward has shown, transported convict labour proved important to the “networks of empire” thrown across various territories by the voc, which in doing so helped constitute “multiple and intersecting fields of partial sovereignty.”24 Security and penal considerations played a significant role in the matching of prisoners and destinations. For instance, Ruth Pike has described that in the Spanish empire recidivist prisoners were less likely to be sent to North Africa, while deserters were shipped mainly to the New World.25 However, the labour needs of the various presidios represented the general guiding principle for the choice of destination. Moreover, while penal servitude in metropolitan Spain was exclusively linked to the state’s economic interests, in Spanish America prisoners sentenced to hard labour by the colonial courts were also leased to private employers who used them in mines, manufactures, and mills, eventu- ally to compensate for the severe shortage of labour due to the decline in the Indian population from the mid-sixteenth century. Particularly after Spain’s losses to England during the Seven Years War (1756–1763), some hundreds of convicts – together with black slaves, their number progressively diminishing as that of convicts grew – were also involved in the fortification of Latin American ports such as Havana (Cuba) and San Juan (Puerto Rico). Havana served as the main hub for the New World presidios, and presidiarios came there from Mexico as well as from Spain. In Spain, following a system devised in the sixteenth century to supply convict rowers for the galleys, convicts awaited transportation to Spanish America in the central prisons of Toledo, Valladolid, and Seville and were shipped mainly through the port of Cadiz. Since they could be sent only on warships carrying troops, they often had to wait for years in the special depósito of La Carraca, subject to the informal practice, contrary to existing legislation, of exploiting labour of convicts await- ing transportation. In colonial settings, penal servitude was an integral part of a broader system of legal bondage that included slavery, serfdom, indentured service, and debt
24 Kerry Ward, Networks of Empire: Forced Migration in the Dutch East India Company (Cambridge, 2008), 6. 25 See especially Pike, Penal Servitude in Early Modern Spain.
26 See Bush, Servitude in Modern Times; David Eltis, ed., Coerced and Free Migration: Global Perspectives (Stanford, 2002); Emma Christopher, Cassandra Pybus, and Marcus Rediker, eds., Many Middle Passages: Forced Migration and the Making of the Modern World (Berkeley, 2007). The perspective of studying global migrations beyond the traditional focus on “free” migration is a central element of global migration history. See, for instance, Dirk Hoerder, Cultures in Contact: World Migrations in the Second Millennium (Durham and London, 2002); Jan Lucassen and Leo Lucassen, “The Mobility Transition Revisited, 1500–1900: What the Case of Europe Can Offer to Global History,” Journal of Global Labour History, 4 (2009), 347–377; Jan Lucassen, Leo Lucassen, and Patrick Manning, eds., Migration History in World History: Multidisciplinary Approaches (Leiden and Boston, 2010); Jan Lucassen, “From Mobility Transition to Comparative Global Migration History,” Journal of Global History, 6 (2011), 299–307; Ulbe Bosma, Gijs Kessler, and Leo Lucassen, eds., Migration and Membership Regimes in Global and Historical Perspective. An Introduction (Leiden and Boston, 2013); Donna Gabaccia and Dirk Hoerder, eds., Connecting Seas and Connected Ocean Rims: Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans and China Seas Migrations from the 1830s to the 1930s (Leiden and Boston, 2011). It should be noted, however, that up to this point these studies have paid only marginal attention to convict migration. 27 Aaron S. Fogleman, “From Slaves, Convicts, and Servants to Free Passengers: The Transformation of Immigration in the Era of the American Revolution,” The Journal of American History, 85:1 (1998), 43–76. See also Roger A. Ekirch, Bound for America: The Transportation of British Convicts to the Colonies, 1718–1775 (Oxford, 1987); Don Jordan and Michael Walsh, White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain’s White Slaves in America (London, 2008). 28 Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston, 2000).
Following the “age of revolution,” a new ideological climate increasingly placed a premium on the ideal of “free labour.” Consequently, religious and scientific motivations and the economic interests of a part of the elite produced the rise of the penitentiary in the north-eastern American states during the nineteenth century.29 In the debate between the supporters of the Pennsylvania model (continuous isolation and work confined to single-prisoner cells) and those of the Auburn and Sing Sing models (night-time isolation and congregate silent labour in a factory-like setting), the arrangement and exploitation of prisoners’ work became absolutely central. By the 1850s all northern us state prisons had committed to the congregate system, which brought together the ideal of making the prisoner a “silent and insulated working machine”30 and private capital’s interests in the contract system, as opposed to the public account system dominating the Pennsylvania model. Moreover, workshop- based congregate labour proved a far more efficient deployment of penal labour, at least from capital’s point of view, than the artisanal production required by the outmoded Pennsylvania system, which forced prisoners to work at handicrafts in isolation in their cells. In this emergent penal regime, the imperative of productive labour superseded the revolutionary era’s ideals of punishment and penitence. In various parts of the world, local elites eagerly demonstrated their commitment to “modernity” by replicating the debate on the Auburn and Philadelphia systems. Yet, the relationship between the American “model” and the new prisons created in subsequent decades cannot be conceived as one of mere transmission and reception.31 In Europe, penal uses of convict labour
29 Glen A. Gildemeister, Prison Labor and Convict Competition with Free Workers in Industrializing America, 1840–1890 (New York and London, 1987); Adam J. Hirsch, The Rise of the Penitentiary: Prisons and Punishment in Early America (New Haven, 1992); Elinor M. McGinn, At Hard Labor: Inmate Labor at the Colorado State Penitentiary, 1871–1940 (New York, 1993); Larry Goldsmith, Penal Reform, Convict Labor, and Prison Culture in Massachusetts, 1800–1880 (Philadelphia, 1994); Michael Meranze, Laboratories of Virtue: Punishment, Revolution, and Authority in Philadelphia, 1760–1835 (Chapel Hill, 1996); Mark Colvin, Penitentiaries, Reformatories, and Chain Gangs: Social Theory and the History of Punishment in Nineteenth-Century America (New York, 1997); Rebecca M. McLennan, The Crisis of Imprisonment: Protest, Politics, and the Making of the American Penal State, 1776–1941 (New York, 2008). 30 The sentence was used by Elam Lynds, first warden of Auburn. Quoted in W. David Lewis, From Newgate to Dannemora. The Rise of the Penitentiary in New York, 1796–1848 (Ithaca, 1965), 88. 31 For a useful survey of the historiography on prisons that makes a similar argument, see Mary Gibson, “Global Perspectives on the Birth of the Prison,” The American Historical
Review, 116:4 (2011), 1040–1063. For a survey of the literature on colonial punishment, see Sherman, “Tensions of Colonial Punishment.” The most important recent studies on the history of the prison are: David D. Arnold, “The Colonial Prison: Power, Knowledge and Penology in Nineteenth-Century India,” in David D. Arnold and David Hardiman, eds., Subaltern Studies VIII (Delhi, 1994), 148–187; Norbert Finzsch and Robert Jütte, eds., Institutions of Confinement: Hospitals, Asylums, and Prisons in Western Europe and North America, 1500–1950 (Cambridge, 1996); Ricardo D. Salvatore and Carlos Aguirre, eds., The Birth of the Penitentiary in Latin America: Essays on Criminology, Prison Reform, and Social Control, 1830–1940 (Austin, 1996); Norval Morris and David J. Rothman, eds., The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society (New York, 1998); Florence Bernault, ed., Enfermement, prison et châtiments en Afrique du 19e siècle à nos jours (Paris, 1999) [revised English version: A History of Prison and Confinement in Africa (Portsmouth, 2003)]; Ricardo D. Salvatore, Carlos Aguirre, and Gilbert M. Joseph, eds., Crime and Punishment in Latin America: Law and Society since Late Colonial Times (Durham, 2001); Peter Zinoman, The Colonial Bastille: A History of Imprisonment in Vietnam, 1862–1940 (Berkeley, 2001); Dikötter and Brown, Cultures of Confinement; Madhurima Sen, Prisons in Colonial Bengal, 1838–1919 (Calcutta, 2007); Helen Johnston, ed., Punishment and Control in Historical Perspective (Houndmills, 2008). Also relevant for this discussion: Francis Snyder and Douglas Hay, eds., Labour, Law and Crime: An Historical Perspective (London and New York, 1987); Clare Anderson, Legible Bodies: Race, Criminality and Colonialism in South Asia (Oxford and New York, 2004). 32 See, especially, John Conley, “Revising Conceptions about the Origin of Prisons: The Importance of Economic Considerations,” Social Science Quarterly, 62:2 (1981), 247–258; Spierenburg, The Prison Experience, 122–125. 33 On the intertwining of corporal and carceral punishment, see, for instance, Diana Paton, No Bond but the Law: Punishment, Race, and Gender in Jamaican State Formation, 1780–1870 (Durham, 2004). On the later impact of criminal anthropology on the redefinition of indi- viduals and groups as inherently criminal, see Mary Gibson, Born to Crime: Cesare Lombroso and the Origins of Biological Criminology (Westport, 2002); Peter Becker and
In this respect, the chapters by David Arnold, Stacey Hynd and Carlos Aguirre and Ricardo D. Salvatore published in this volume, by focusing respectively on India, British Africa and Latin America, resonate with the findings of the most recent literature34 For instance, scholars have described the nineteenth-century road-gangs in India, the industrial workshops in the Cairo Prison, and the “agricultural penitentiaries” in French North Africa and Italian Tripolitania; and they have narrated the exploitation of convict labour in Cecil Rhodes’s De Beers Mining Company in Kimberley, South Africa’s first industrial city, and the shibalo system through which Mozambican men and women escaping contract labour were forced to work for local public works and private enterprises and in the mines in South Africa, Rhodesia, and Congo up to the 1940s. But researchers have observed similar patterns for highly racially segregated non-colonial contexts, such as post- independence Brazil and the American South after the Civil War and the abolition of slavery.
Richard F. Wetzell, eds., Criminals and Their Scientists: The History of Criminology in International Perspective (New York, 2006). 34 Michael S. Hindus, Prison and Plantation: Crime, Justice, and Authority in Massachusetts and South Carolina, 1767–1878 (Chapel Hill, 1980); William H. Worger, South Africa’s City of Diamonds: Mine Workers and Monopoly Capitalism in Kimberley, 1867–1895 (New Haven, 1987); Alex Lichtenstein, Twice the Work of Free Labor: The Political Economy of Convict Labor in the New South (New York, 1996); David M. Oshinsky, Worse than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice (New York, 1996); Matthew J. Mancini, One Dies, Get Another: Convict Leasing in the American South, 1866–1928 (Columbia, 1996); Mary Ellen Curtin, Black Prisoners and Their World: Alabama, 1865–1900 (Charlottesville, 2000); Ricardo D. Salvatore, “Penitentiaries, Visions of Class, and Export Economies: Brazil and Argentina Compared,” in idem and Aguirre, The Birth of the Penitentiary, 194–223; Martha A. Myers, Race, Labor, and Punishment in the New South (Columbus, 1998); Rudolph Peters, “Egypt and the Age of the Triumphant Prison: Legal Punishment in Nineteenth Century Egypt,” Annales Islamologiques, 36 (2002), 253–285; Bridget O’Laughlin, “Proletarianization, Agency and Changing Rural Livelihoods: Forced Labour and Resistance in Colonial Mozambique,” Journal of Southern African Studies, 28:3 (2002), 511–530; William H. Worger, “Convict Labour, Industrialists and the State in the us South and South Africa, 1870–1930,” Journal of Southern African Studies, 30:1 (2004), 63–86; Mario Da Passano, ed., Le colonie penali nell’Europa dell’Ottocento (Rome, 2004), 89–128; Stacey Hynd, “Imperial Gallows: Capital Punishment, Violence and Colonial Rule in Britain’s African Territories, c. 1903–1968,” (D Phil, University of Oxford, 2007); Robert Perkinson, Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire (New York, 2008); Nigel Penn, “‘Close and Merciful Watchfulness’: John Montagu’s Convict System in the Mid-nineteenth Century Cape Colony,” Cultural and Social History, 5:4 (2008), 465–480; Julia Seibert, More Continuity Than Change? New Forms of Unfree Labor in the Belgian Congo, 1908–1930 (Leiden, 2011).
In all these cases, convict labour proved instrumental in matching the economic interests of local and colonial entrepreneurs and authorities with a persistent racial hierarchy and mentality. This process cut across both the private and public use of prison labour, and could involve both “excarceration” beyond penitentiary walls and incarceration. Not surprisingly, then, in the American South the phasing out of the excarcerative convict lease in the late nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century did not lead to a reformed system of “modern” incarceration, mimicking the Northern states, but rather to the states’ chain gangs. Convict labour was used then to build roads and other infrastructure or for state-controlled agricultural work, as in the infamous example of Parchman Farm in Mississippi, opened in 1904 and still notorious in the 1960s, when state authorities relied on the prison farm to break the will of civil rights activists. In the nineteenth century – allegedly “the age of the triumphant prison”35 –- and beyond, prison practice in most of the world therefore largely contradicted Michel Foucault’s assumption of a sudden and definitive shift from corporal to disciplinary punishment, which in fact appears to be an artefact of a small corner of the emergent, modern, capitalist economies.36 Moreover, even in these regions and states, the modern prison penitentiary coexisted with other forms of punishment. Convict labour, in the guise of both rehabilitation and punishment, remained a central feature of this more complex “coercive network.”37 Indeed, within colonial empires, the rise of the prison did not negate the continuation and expansion of transportation, and often flourished alongside it.38 Both in Britain and in France, attempts to replace transportation
35 Michelle Perrot, “Délinquence et système pénitentiaire en France au 19e siècle,” Annales esc, 30 (1975), 81. See also Peters, “Egypt and the Age of the Triumphant Prison.” 36 Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la prison (Paris, 1975) [English transla- tion: Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York, 1977)]. A similar thesis is put forward in David Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston, 1973); Michael Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750–1850 (New York, 1978). The majority of the recent literature on the history of prisons (see previous note) is overtly critical of Foucault’s thesis on this point. Earlier critiques can be found for instance in Michelle Perrot, ed., L’impossible prison. Recherches sur le système pénitentiaire aux XIXe siècle (Paris, 1980). 37 Sherman, “Tensions of Colonial Punishment,” 669. For a broader discussion of the poten- tiality of this concept, see section two of the present chapter. 38 For a survey of early modern and (especially) modern penal transportation: Anderson and Maxwell-Stewart, “Convict Labour and the Western Empires.” The most important studies on modern transportation in the British empire include Robert I.M. Burnett, Hard Labour, Hard Fare and a Hard Bed: New Zealand’s Search for Its Own Penal Philosophy
(Wellington, 1995); Clare Anderson, “Unfree Labour and Its Discontents: Transportation from Mauritius to Australia, 1825–1845,” Australian Studies, 13:1 (1998), 116–133; Clara F.E. Hollis Hallett, Forty Years of Convict Labour: Bermuda, 1823–1863 (Bermuda, 1999); Clare Anderson, Convicts in the Indian Ocean: Transportation from South Asia to Mauritius, 1815–1853 (Basingstoke, 2000); Cassandra Pybus and Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, American Citizens, British Slaves: Yankee Political Prisoners in an Australian Penal Colony, 1839–1850 (Melbourne, 2000); Satadru Sen, Disciplining Punishment: Colonialism and Convict Society in the Andaman Islands (New Delhi, 2000); Alan Brooke and David Brandon, Bound for Botany Bay: British Convict Voyages to Australia (Richmond, 2005); Stephen Nicholas, ed., Convict Workers: Reinterpreting Australia’s Past (Cambridge, 1989). For the French Empire see André Zysberg, Les galériens. Vies et destins de 60000 forçats sur les galères de France, 1680–1748 (Paris, 1987); Alice Bullard, Exile to Paradise: Savagery and Civilization in Paris and the South Pacific (Stanford, 2000); Peter Redfield, Space in the Tropics: From Convicts to Rockets in French Guiana (Berkeley, 2000); Jean Vanmai, Pilou Pilou, 3 vols. (Paris, 1998–2002); Nicole Castan and André Zysberg, Histoire des galères, bagnes et prisons en France de l’Ancien Régime (Paris, 2002); Jean Kergrist, Les bagnards du canal de Nantes à Brest. La vie au camp de Glomel (1823–1832) (Spézet, 2003); Jean-Lucien Sanchez, “Identifier, exclure, régénérer. La relégation des récidivistes en Guyane (1885–1938),” in Marco Cicchini and Michel Porret, eds., Les sphères du pénal avec Michel Foucault (Lausanne, 2007), 139–153. For the Portuguese empire see Coates, Convicts and Orphans; Timothy J. Coates, “The Imperial Prison of Luanda and ‘Effective Occupation’ of Angola,” Portuguese Literary and Cultural Studies, 15/16 (2010), 79–114; Timothy J. Coates, Convict Labor in the Portuguese Empire, 1740–1932. Redefining the Empire with Forced Labor and New Imperialism (Leiden and Boston, 2014). 39 Simon Devereux, “The Making of the Penitentiary Act, 1775–1779,” The Historical Journal, 42:2 (1999), 405–433. On the history of British prisons, see Seán McConville, A History of the English Prison Administration, 1750–1877 (London and Boston, 1981); Margaret DeLacy, Prison Reform in Lancashire, 1700–1850 (Stanford, 1986); Clive Emsley, “The History of Crime and Crime Control Institutions, c. 1770–c. 1945,” in Mike Maguire, Rod Morgan, and Robert Reiner, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Criminology (Oxford, 1994), Ch. 4. On the history of French prisons, see Jacques-Guy Petit, Ces peines obscures. La prison pénale en France, 1780–1875 (Paris, 1990); Henri Gaillac, Les maisons de correction 1830–1945 (Paris, 1991); Michelles Perrot, Les ombres de l’histoire. Crime et châtiment au XIXe siècle (Paris, 2001). 40 Anderson, Convicts in the Indian Ocean.
1830s, and later by the rise of nationalist movements in the Indian subconti- nent, all of which shifted imperial flows of coerced labour and settlement. Between 1787 and 1868, with the North American colonies now closed off, British authorities shipped some 160,000 prisoners from Britain to New South Wales, Van Diemen’s Land, and Western Australia. From the late eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, many thousands more convicts were sentenced to transportation from British India to penal settlements in the Malay Peninsula, Burma, Mauritius, and the Andaman Islands. Minor convict migrant streams also appear significant in some specific periods and in rela- tion to particular events: for instance, a few thousand were transported from Ceylon to Mauritius and Southeast Asia (1815–1868); three or four hundred non-Anglo-Celtic convicts were transported from Canada, the Cape, and the West Indies to New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land; a hundred convicts were sentenced to transportation in Mauritius and sent to the Australian settlements (1825–1845); from the 1830s to the 1860s several thousand Chinese and Malay convicts from Burma were transported to the Bengal and Madras presidencies and to Bombay. For all the differences in these experiences, the operation of the penal settlements depended heavily on convicts’ productive capacities, and the governance of these settlements was organized around the transportation and labour that brought them into existence in the first place. To put it another way, an account of the imperial expansions of the nineteenth- century world remains incomplete without acknowledging the centrality of penal labour to this process, penal discipline as a significant mode of colonial governance, and penal transportation as a key aspect of imperial sovereignty. In the case of the French Empire, the building of prison-manufactories – the maisons centrales, akin to the American penitentiaries observed by de Tocqueville and Beaumont in their 1831 visit to the us – in the period 1830–1835, where around 300,000 prisoners were held every year under terrible condi- tions, did not exclude the extensive use of alternative, excarcerative punitive practices. Following the abolition of slavery in the colonies (1848), the insurrec- tions of 1848, and the expansion of its colonial empire, the French state (under imperial or republican governance in the metropole) resorted to transporta- tion on a massive scale, as Jean-Lucien Sanchez shows in his contribution to this volume. A law passed on 30 May 1854 made Guiana the destination of both political and common-law bagnards; from 1861 New Caledonia was added as a place of transportation, for instance for those involved in the Commune, but in 1897 all deportees and releguées – petty recidivist criminals who could be transported under a law of 1885 – were transported again to Guiana. Transportation within the French Empire therefore began later than in the British case, but continued well into the twentieth century, longer than its
British counterpart. With deportation eventually abolished by the Front Populaire in 1938 and the last releguées returning to France in 1953, a total of nearly 100,000 men and women are believed to have been transported under French penal jurisdiction, 69,894 of them to Guiana (52,000 transportés and 17,894 releguées) and the rest to New Caledonia (20,000 and 4,270 respectively, and 3,300 déportés). Similar patterns can be observed for the Portuguese Empire, as Timothy J. Coates highlights here. After the independence of Brazil in 1822 a fundamen- tal reorganization took place within its system of transportation. Convicts from Portugal, Cape Verde, Portuguese Guinea, São Tomé, and Mozambique were sent instead to the depósito in Luanda, Angola, and convicts from Angola, Portuguese India, Macau, and Timor to an analogous institution on Mozambique Island off the southeast coast of Africa. Around 20,000 convicts were exiled there from 1880 to 1932, when the system ended in Portuguese colonial Africa. Because of their close association with deportations and the massive trans- fer of populations, it is tempting to interpret twentieth-century labour camps as the modern incarnation of these imperial systems of colonial transporta- tion and punishment. We will discuss this point further in the following section. More commonly, however, research on labour camps has focused on their links with the shift to total war and with totalitarian regimes.41 Naturally,
41 See the following notes for references in the text. Significant strands of the literature have dealt with the following other topics related to convict labour: (1) The First World War, but mainly on pows, such as in M. Spoerer, “The Mortality of Allied Prisoners of War and Belgian Civilian Deportees in German Custody during the First World War: A Reappraisal of the Effects of Forced Labour,” Population Studies, 60:2 (2006), 121–136; Klaus Tenfelde and Hans-Christoph Seidel, eds., Zwangsarbeit im Bergwerk (Essen, 2005). (2) Other fas- cist regimes (especially Franco’s Spain): Rafael Torres Mulas, Los esclavos de Franco (Madrid, 2000); Rodolfo Serrano and Daniel Serrano, Toda España era una cárcel. Memoria de los presos del franquismo (Madrid, 2001); Isaias Lafuente, Esclavos por la patria (Madrid, 2002); Julio Prada Rodriguez and Domingo Rodriguez Teijeiro, “El Trabajo os hará Libres: una Aproximación a la Explotación de la Mano de Obra Penal en el Ourense de Guerra y Posguerra,” Minius: Revista do Departamento de Historia, Arte e Xeografía, 10 (2002), 209–236; Carlos Molinero, Martin Sala, and Jaume Sobrequés, eds., Una inmensa prisión. Los campos de concentración y las prisiones durante la guerra civil y el franquismo (Barcelona, 2003); José L. Gutiérrez Casalá, Colonias penitenciarias militarizadas de Montijo. Represión franquista en la Comarca de Mérida (Mérida, 2003); Gonzalo Acosta Bono et al., El canal de los presos (1940–1962). Trabajos forzados: de la represión política a la explotación económica (Barcelona, 2004); Silverio Corvisieri, La villeggiatura di Mussolini. Il confino da Bocchini a Berlusconi (Milan, 2005); Javier Rodrigo, Cautivos. Campos de Concentración en la España franquista, 1936–1947 (Barcelona, 2005); Carlo S. Capogreco, I campi del Duce. L’internamento civile nell’Italia fascista (1940–1943) (Turin, 2006);
José M. Soarez Tavarez, O campo de concentraçao do Taraffal (1936–1954). A origem e o quo- tidiano (Lisbon, 2007); Julius Ruiz, “‘Work and Don’t Lose Hope’: Republican Forced Labour Camps during the Spanish Civil War,” Contemporary European History, 18:4 (2009), 419–441; Álvaro Falquina et al., “Arqueología de los destacamentos penales franquistas en el ferrocarril Madrid-Burgos: El caso de Bustarviejo,” Complutum, 19:2 (2008), 175–195. 42 See, for instance, Rabin Roychowdhury, Black Days in Andaman and Nicobar Islands (New Delhi, 2004); Tilak R. Sareen, Building the Siam-Burma Railway during World War-II: A Documentary Study (Delhi, 2005); Mark Spoerer, “Zwangsarbeitsregimes im Vergleich. Deutschland und Japan im Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieg,” in Tenfelde and Seidel, ed., Zwangsarbeit. 43 See especially Karin Orth, Das System der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager. Eine politische Organisationsgeschichte (Hamburg, 1999); idem, Die Konzentrationslager- ss. Sozialstrukturelle Analysen und biographische Studien (Göttingen, 2000); Mark Spoerer, Zwangsarbeit unter dem Hakenkreuz (Stuttgart and Munich, 2001); idem and Jochen Fleischhacker, “Forced Laborers in Nazi Germany: Categories, Numbers, and Survivors,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 33 (2002), 169–204; Marc Buggeln, “kz-Häftlinge als letzte Arbeitskraftreserve der Bremer Rüstungswirtschaft,” Arbeiterbewegung und Sozialgeschichte, 12 (2003), 19–36; Wolfgang Benz and Barbara Distel, eds., Geschichte der Konzentrationslager 1933–1945, 5 vols. (Berlin, 2004); Marc Buggeln, Arbeit und Gewalt. Das Außenlagersystem des kz Neuengamme (Göttingen, 2009); idem, “Building to Death: Prisoner Forced Labour in the German War Economy – The Neuengamme Subcamps, 1942–1945,” European History Quarterly, 39:4 (2009), 606–632; Jane Caplan and Nikolaus Wachsmann, eds., Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany: The New Histories (London, 2010) [in this volume see especially Jens-Christian Wagner, “Work and Extermination in the Concentration Camps,” 127–148].
44 Adam Tooze, Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (London, 2006). For the previous debate, see Ulrich Herbert, Hitler’s Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labor in Germany under the Third Reich (Cambridge, 1997); idem ed., National Socialist Extermination Policies: Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies (New York, 2000); Götz Aly and Susanne Heim, Architects of Annihilation: Auschwitz and the Logic of Destruction (Princeton, 2002). 45 See especially Nikolaus Wachsmann, “‘Annihilation through Labor’: The Killing of State Prisoners in the Third Reich,” The Journal of Modern History, 71:3 (1999), 624–659; idem, Hitler’s Prisons: Legal Terror in Nazi Germany (New Haven and London, 2004). See also Pierre Pédron, La prison sous Vichy (Paris, 1993); Geraldine von Frijtag, Het recht van de sterkste. Duitse strafrechtspleging in bezet Nederland (Amsterdam, 1999); Alain Bancaud, Une exception ordinaire. La magistrature en France, 1930–1950 (Paris, 2002); Tamara Altman, “Les criminels de droit commun jugés par les conseils de guerre allemands durant la seconde guerre mondiale en Belgique: étude qualitative et quantitative sur base des Personalakten de la prison de Saint-Gilles” (Ph.D., Université Libre de Bruxelles, 2004); Christian G. De Vito, Camosci e girachiavi. Storia del carcere in Italia, 1943–2007 (Rome, 2009); Dimitri Roden, “Van aanhouding tot strafuitvoering. De werking van het Duitse gerechtelijke apparaat in bezet België en Noord-Frankrijk, 1940–1944,” Cahiers d’histoire du temps présent – Bijdragen tot de eigentijdse geschiedenis, 22 (2010), 113–160. 46 For instance: Helmut Bley, South-West Africa under German Rule 1894–1914 (Evanston: 1971); Jürgen Zimmerer, “Die Geburt des ‘Ostlandes’ aus dem Geiste des Kolonialismus. Die nationalsozialistische Eroberungs- und Beherrschungspolitik in (post-)kolonialer Perspektive,” Sozialgeschichte, 19:1 (2004), 10–43; idem, “Annihilation in Africa: The ‘Race War’ in German Southwest Africa (1904–1908) and Its Significance for a Global History of Genocide,” Bulletin of the German Historical Institute (Washington), 37 (2005), 51–58; Birthe Kundrus, “Kontinuitäten, Parallelen, Rezeptionen. Überlegungen zur ‘Kolonialisierung’ des Nationalsozialismus,” WerktattGeschichte, 15 (2006), 45–62; Sebastian Conrad, German Colonialism: A Short History (Cambridge, 2011). See also the papers presented at the work- shop “Internment, Incarceration and Detention: Captivation Histories in Europe around the First and Second World War,” Wassenaar, 3–4 November 2011, especially in the session on “Colonial Perspectives.” An important workshop on this topics had previously been
organized by Stacey Hynd and Taylor Sherman in 2008 at the History Faculty in Cambridge, entitled “Coercive Networks: Violence, Punishment and the Colonial Condition.” An edited selection of the papers presented in the former workshop will be published as: Helen Grevers, Ralf Futselaar, and Christian G. De Vito, eds., Incarceration and Regime Change. European Prisons in and around the Second World War, Berghahn (forthcoming). 47 For example Helen Grevers, “Het leven in de interneringskampen en gevangenissen voor collaborateurs na de Tweede Wereldoorlog in België en Nederland,” bvng/abhc, 31:4 (2009), 30–33. 48 See Viola’s contribution to this volume. Among the most recent studies are: Gerhard Armanski, Maschinen des Terrors: Das Lager (kz und gulag) in der Moderne (Dampfboot, 1993); Edwin Bacon, The Gulag at War: Stalin’s Forced Labour System in the Light of the Archives (New York, 1994); Peter H. Solomon, Jnr, Soviet Criminal Justice under Stalin (Cambridge, 1996); Stephen Wheatcroft, “The Scale and Nature of German and Soviet Repression and Mass Killings, 1930–1945,” Europe-Asia Studies, 48:8 (1996), 1319–1353; Nikolai Bougai, The Deportation of Peoples in the Soviet Union (New York, 1996); James R. Harris, “The Growth of the Gulag: Forced Labor in the Urals Region, 1929–31,” Russian Review, 56:2 (1997), 265–280; David J. Nordlander, “Origins of a Gulag Capital: Magadan and Stalinist Control in the Early 1930s,” Slavic Review, 57:4 (1998), 791–812; Lynne Viola, “The Other Archipelago: Kulak Deportations to the North in 1930,” Slavic Review, 60:4 (2001), 730–755; Judith Pallot, “Forced Labour for Forestry: The Twentieth Century History of Colonization and Settlement in the North of Perm’ Oblast,” Europe-Asia Studies, 54:7 (2002), 1055–1083; Nancy Adler, The Gulag Survivor: Beyond the Soviet System (New Brunswick, 2002); Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History (New York, 2003); Paul R. Gregory and Valery Lazarev, eds., The Economics of Forced Labor: The Soviet Gulag (Stanford, 2003); Lynne Viola, The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin’s Special Settlements (Oxford, 2007); Alan Barenberg, “Prisoners Without Borders: Zazonniki and the Transformation of Vorkuta after Stalin,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 57:4 (2007), 513–534; Steven A. Barnes, Death and Redemption: The Gulag and the Shaping of Soviet Society (Princeton, 2011).
49 On the Soviet Gulag, see Barnes, Death and Redemption. On Romania, see Ion Bălan, Regimul concentrationar din Romania 1945–1964 (Bucharest, 2000). On North Korean labour camps: Kang Chol-hwan, The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in a North Korean Gulag (Oxford, 2001); Kim Yong, Long Road Home: Testimony of a North Korean Camps Survivor (New York, 2009). 50 On Chinese prisons and camps: Patricia E. Griffin, The Chinese Communist Treatment of Counterrevolutionaries, 1924–1949 (Princeton, 1976); Jean-Luc Domenach, Chine: L’archipel oublié (Paris, 1992); H.H. Wu, Laogai: The Chinese Gulag (Oxford, 1992); James D. Seymour and Richard Anderson, New Ghosts, Old Ghosts: Prisons and Labor Reform Camps in China (Amonk, ny, 1997); Frank Dikötter, “Crime and Punishment in Post-Liberation China: The Prisoners of a Beijing Gaol in the 1950s,” The China Quarterly, 149 (1997), 147–159; idem, “Crime and Punishment in Early Republican China: Beijing’s First Model Prison, 1912–1922,” Late Imperial China, 21:2 (2000), 140–162; idem, Crime, Punishment, and the Prison in Modern China, 1895–1949 (New York, 2002); idem, “The Promise of Repentance: Prison Reform in Modern China,” British Journal of Criminology, 42:2 (2002), 240–249; Fu Hualing, “Re-education Through Labour in Historical Perspective,” The China Quarterly, 184 (2005), 811–830; Klaus Mühlhahn, Criminal Justice in China: A History (Cambridge, ma, and London, 2009).
51 For an example from a democratic state, see Volker Janssen, “When the ‘Jungle’ Met the Forest: Public Work, Civil Defense, and Prison Camps in Postwar California,” The Journal of American History, 96:3 (2009), 702–726. 52 Daniel Branch, “Imprisonment and Colonialism in Kenya, c. 1930–1952: Escaping the Carceral Archipelago,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 38:2 (2005), 239–265; Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya (New York, 2005); David Anderson, Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (New York and London, 2005).
53 Adrianne Dercksen and Loes Verplanke, Geschiedenis van de onmaatschappelijkheids- bestrijding in Nederland, 1914–1970 (Amsterdam, 1987); Wolfgang Ayass, Das Arbeitshaus Breitenau. Bettler, Landstreicher, Prostituierte, Zuhälter und Fürsorgeempfänger in der Korrektions- und Landarmenanstalt Breitenau (1874–1949) (Kassel, 1992); idem, “Die ‘korrek- tionelle Nachhaft’. Zur Geschichte der strafrechtlichen Arbeitshausunterbringung in Deutschland,” Zeitschrift für Neuere Rechtsgeschichte, 15 (1993), 184–201; Ben Maandag and Tonny van der Mee, De ‘asocialen’. Heropvoeding in Drentse kampen (Rotterdam, 2005); Thomas Irmer, Barbara Reischl, and Kaspar Nürnberg, “Das Städtische Arbeits- und Bewahrungshaus Rummelsburg in Berlin-Lichtenberg,” 2008,
Expanding Convict Labour Historiography
The survey in the previous section indicates the potentiality of a process-based approach to the history of convict labour and thus the need to overcome the present fragmentation of research into a number of sub-disciplines and geo- graphic areas related to single regimes of punishment.57 However, the survey also suggests the limitations of the available historiography on convict labour in at least two ways. On the one hand there exists a chronological limitation, especially as far as the pre-1500 period is concerned. On the other hand there is an undue focus in the historiography on a more or less explicit Eurocentric approach. Both of these limitations remain bound to the unwarranted teleol- ogy of penal reform and modernization that is assumed to move progressively towards stable forms of incarceration and rehabilitation, and away from bru- tality, unmitigated punishment, and naked coercion or enslavement. This view imagines the labour camps of totalitarian social orders as the negation of modernity. This section seeks to address these two issues, in order to put forward some suggestions for the development of a more global and long-term perspective on the history of convict labour, one less prone to reifying concep- tions of punishment associated with “modernity.”58 By extending our chronology back before 1500, two long-term trends can be observed. The first relates to the continuity or discontinuity of the experience of penal transportation.59 The second refers to the “birth of the prison” as part
des étrangers (Paris, 2009); Michele Ford, “Constructing Legality: The Management of Irregular Labour Migration in Thailand and Malaysia,” in van der Linden and Himmelstoss, eds., Labour History beyond Borders, 177–200; Alessandra Sciurba, Campi di forza. Percorsi confinati di migranti in Europa (Verona, 2009). For a global view, see
60 See especially Walter Scheidel’s comparative studies: ed. Rome and China. Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires (New York, 2009); and “Slavery and Forced Labor in Early China and the Roman World,” Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics, April 2013
In the Roman empire the damnatio ad metalla led to the transportation of convicts (damnati, or damnati in metallum) to the gold and silver mines of Numidia, the alabaster mines and the porphyry quarries of Egypt, the marble quarries on the island of Proconnesus (Marmara), and other sites in Cyprus, Sardinia, and Palestine. In the Han empire, convicts were transported to the government salt and iron monopolies, where they staged repeated revolts in the final part of the first century bce. In both empires the employment of convict labour was linked with the trends in the demand and supply of slaves: in the case of the Roman empire the rise of convict labour from the third cen- tury ce onward is probably due to the reduced influx of slaves, in turn possibly caused by the end of the wars of conquest that provided the majority of slaves; in the Han Empire of the second and first centuries bce the “boundless supply of cheap corvee and convict labor”61 appears to be a key explanation for the alleged absence of slaves in some economic sectors. Moreover, in the Chinese context, slavery as an institution was dependent on convict labour, since the single most important way to become a slave was that of being the relative of a convicted individual. The flexibility of labour relations has been especially stressed for the Roman empire by ancient scholars who, moving away from its traditional character- ization as a “slave society,” have pointed to the existence of a considerable degree of inter-changeability between the work of freemen, slaves, and freed slaves within what has been defined as a “unified labour force.”62 Transported convicts could also be included in the latter. Central to this fluidity of labour relations was the “open” character of Roman slavery, marked by frequent man- umissions, social mobility linked to positive incentives (salary, education, etc.), and the relatively high level of legal integration of ex-slaves into the citizenry. Similarly, the literature on the Han empire refers to frequent general amnesties and special pardons for convicts of various classifications.
American Journal of Archaeology, 107:4 (2003), 525–557; Mario Liverani, Antico Oriente. Storia, società, economia (Rome, 2009). 61 Wilbur, “Industrial Slavery in China during the Former Han Dynasty,” 66. 62 See especially the much debated interpretation proposed by Peter Temin: “The Labor Market of the Early Roman Empire,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 34:4 (2004), 513–538; The Roman Market Economy (Princeton, 2013). For a discussion of this and other approaches to labour in the Roman empire: A. Zuiderhoek, “Workers of the ancient world: analysing labour in classical antiquity,” Workers of the World, 3 (2013), 32–48. See also P.A. Brunt, “Free Labor and Public Works at Rome,” Journal of Roman Studies, 70 (1980), 81–100. The key reference on ancient slavery is Keith Bradley and Paul Cartledge, eds., The Cambridge World History of Slavery (Cambridge, 2011), vol. 1.
New research is certainly needed on this topic, together with greater coop- eration between historians working on ancient and modern empires. However, it seems that a degree of continuity can be hypothesized between ancient, early modern, and nineteenth-century transportation. Furthermore, as sug- gested in the previous section, it is also tempting to propose that such continu- ity can be further traced between transportation and twentieth-century labour camps. Although the emphasis lies on the movement of inmates in the case of transportation, and on the locations of their final destinations in that of labour camps, transportation and camps can be seen as two different modes of a similar phenomenon of channelling and corralling the labour of subject or criminalized categories of the populace.63 To begin with, the above four condi- tions apply to the twentieth-century camps too. Moreover, empirical evidence also points to this long-term continuity. For instance, as Coates argues in his contribution to this volume, agricultural penal colonies created outside Lisbon soon after the end of transportation to Portuguese Africa in 1932 were later used during the Salazar regime and, at least in the case of the Colónia Penal
63 An earlier vein of scholarship, associated with criminologist Thorsten Sellin, posited just such continuity. See Thorsten Sellin, Slavery and the Penal System (New York, 1976), and John M. Moore, “Classic Text Revisited: Slavery and the Penal System,” Criminal Justice Matters, 85:1 (2011), 40, for a recent retrospective appreciation of Sellin’s work. One possi- ble explanation for the different way of framing transportation and the labour camps lies in the fact that a separation exists between the historiography of transportation, prison, and labour camps in the twentieth century. Moreover, the demise of colonialism could have further accentuated this separation: Klaus Mühlhahn, on the contrary, has shown the global connections and transfers through which the concentration camps “moved” first from the European colonial domains to the European continent and later further throughout the world (“The Concentration Camp in Global Historical Perspective,” History Compass, 8:6 (2010), 543–561). A totalization of the twentieth-century experience of the camps has followed, especially as far as the Nazi concentration camps are con- cerned. The twentieth century has therefore been framed as “the century of the camps,” and Agamben’s theory of the state of exception and of the camps has avoided any refer- ence to colonial policy and experience, although it extensively deals with institutions of Roman law and nineteenth- and twentieth-century European politics. See Joel Kotek and Pierre Rigoulot, Century of Concentration Camps: 100 Years of Radical Evil (London, 2004); Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford, 1998); idem, State of Exception (Chicago, 2005). Some scholars, however, have seen the seeds of the Nazi camp system in German colonial policy in Southwest Africa in the suppression of the Herero Revolt; Bley, South-West Africa under German Rule; Conrad, German Colonialism; Mühlhahn, “The Concentration Camp in Global Historical Perspective,” 546. When considering the long-term continuity between transportation and twentieth-century labour camps, an important issue is that of the role played by internment in both regimes.
Agricola de “António Maceira” in Sintra, continue to function up to this day. Similarly, the long-term continuity between the Tsarist katorga and the Soviet Gulag can be understood in the context of Russian internal colonization of the eastern regions, especially once recent interpretations are taken into account that point to the deportation of millions of peasants to the “other archipelago” of the special settlements in the early 1930s.64 This holds true as well for the network of Nazi concentration and labour camps.65 In fact, deportation to Germany during the Second World War could be envisaged as an integrated system providing forced and convict labour from the Reich’s annexed or controlled countries to specific sites in order to serve the needs of the Nazi war economy. This long-term perspective on transportation also poses the question of the medieval experience of convict labour, addressed in detail by Alice Rio in this volume66 In fact, at least in the Western European context, the Middle Ages witnessed the virtual disappearance of penal transportation. The four points mentioned above could suggest some explanations for this trend. With the reorientation of the Roman empire towards the East, the European terri- tory was essentially split into a series of political entities that were too many, too small, and too weak to conceive and organize the transportation of their small number of convicts. A “provincialization of politics” took place, since “local élites began to deal with the ‘barbarian’ powers rather than with the imperial government, which was by now too distant and decreasingly relevant.”67 Moreover, the shift from taxation to landowning as the basis of the
64 Viola, The Unknown Gulag, esp. 185–188. See also Abby M. Schrader, “Branding the Exile as ‘Other’: Corporal Punishment and the Construction of Boundaries in mid-Nineteenth- Century Russia,” in David L. Hoffmann and Yanni Kotsonis, eds., Russian Modernity (London, 2000), 19–40; Hellie Richard, “Migration in Early Modern Russia, 1480s–1780s,” in Eltis, ed., Coerced and Free Migration; Andrew A. Gentes, Exile to Siberia, 1590–1822: Corporeal Commodification and Administrative Systematization in Russia (Houndmills, 2008); idem, Exile, Murder and Madness in Siberia, 1823–61 (Houndmills, 2010). This was a point made by Sellin at the time. 65 See references in note 42. For an extended explanation of this hypothesis, see Christian G. De Vito, “Mussolini’s Prisons, Final Act (1943–1945),” paper for the European Social Science History Conference (Glasgow, 11–14 April 2012). 66 For the considerations that follow in the text, see William Chester Jordan, From Servitude to Freedom: Manumission in the Sénonais in the Thirteenth Century (Philadelphia, 1986); Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity, ad 150–750 (New York, 1989); Christopher J. Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400–800 (Oxford, 2004); idem, The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000 (London, 2008). 67 Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome, 108.
68 Pike, Penal Servitude in Early Modern Spain, 4. 69 Guy Geltner, The Medieval Prison: A Social History (Princeton and Oxford, 2008). Particularly in the 1970s and 1980s a broad debate developed among historians on the shift in the attitude towards poverty and the emergence of new institutions between the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. Studies on the emergence of mental asylums also played a key role in this. Michel Foucault’s Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique (Paris, 1961) in many ways anticipated this debate. See, for instance, Jean-Pierre Gutton, La société et les pauvres. L’exemple de la Généralité de Lyon, 1534–1789 (Paris, 1971); Olwen H. Hufton, The Poor of Eighteenth-Century France, 1750–1789 (Oxford, 1974);
Bronisłav Geremek, Les marginaux parisiens aux XIV et XVe siècles (Paris, 1976); idem, La potence ou la pitié. L’Europe et les pauvres du Moyen Age à nos jours (Paris, 1978); Michel Mollat, Les pauvres au Moyen Age. Etude sociale (Paris, 1978); Jacques Le Goff, “Les margin- aux dans l’Occident médiéval,” Cahiers Jussieu, 5 (1979), 19–28; Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly, Poverty and Capitalism in Pre-Industrial Europe (Brighton, 1979); Pieter Spierenburg, The Emergence of Carceral Institutions: Prisons, Galleys and Lunatic Asylums, 1550–1900 (Rotterdam, 1984); Stuart Woolf, The Poor in Western Europe in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (London, 1986). While often linked to a Marxist perspective on the origins of capitalism, in some authors the long-term approach was inspired by Norbert Elias’s classic Über den Prozeß der Zivilisation. Soziogenetische und psychogenetische Untersuchungen, 2 vols. (Basel, 1939) [English translation: The Civilizing Process (Oxford, 1969 and 1982)]. Other authors have also referred to Gerhard Oestreich, Geist und Gestalt des frühmodernen Staates (Berlin, 1969) [English translation: Neostoicism and the Early Modern State (Cambridge, 1982)]. 70 The key reference is Spierenburg, The Prison Experience. For a long-term approach to the history of the prison, see also Xavier Rousseaux, “Pour une histoire de la justice pénale en Belgique (13e-20e s.),” Histoire de la Justice, 8–9 (1995–1996), 113–147; Edward M. Peters, “Prison before the Prison: The Ancient and Medieval Worlds,” in Morris and Rothman, eds., The Oxford History of the Prison, 3–43; Xavier Rousseaux, “Dalle città medievali agli stati nazionali: rassegna sulla storia della criminalità e della giustizia penale in Europa (1350–1850),” in Luigi Cajani, ed., Criminalità, giustizia penale e ordine pubblico nell’Europa moderna (Milan, 1997); Xavier Rousseaux, “Historiographie du crime et de la justice crimi- nelle dans l’espace français (1990–2005). Partie I: du Moyen-Age à la fin de l’Ancien Régime,” Crime, Histoire et Sociétés, 10:1 (2006), 123–158; Falk Bretschneider, Gefangene Gesellschaft.
Spierenburg, including his chapter in this volume, long-term shifts in mentali- ties and in material conditions played a role in making work a central feature of these institutions. Most importantly, the study of the workhouses leads to the following issues: the productive or non-productive character of convict labour (and the problem of its competition with free labour); the rehabilitative or punitive function of work; the specialization of space in the institutions and the differentiation within the inmate population, often through the gendered-, age-, and socially constructed concept of the “able-bodied” labourer. These questions, and the prison workhouse model as such, proved to be central in the rise of the penitentiary during the nineteenth century.71 By examining the phenomenon of convict labour within a chronology going back before 1500, it is thus possible to address its role in the transition to modernity while at the same time avoiding a modernization-oriented approach that stresses a sudden transition accompanying the late eighteenth-century Industrial Revolution.72 This approach entails a move away from teleological concepts such as “proto-industrialization” or “proletarianization” and frames convict labour as one form of labour relations involved in the process of com- modification of labour. We have already explored this issue in the first section. What is important to add here is that, in order to proceed in this direction, a truly global perspective is needed, one that investigates the applicability of the scholarship on European medieval and early modern transportation, prisons, and workhouses described above to non-European experiences. For instance, what kind of punitive systems and convict labour were in use in the Abbassid, Mamluk, and Ottoman caliphates, in the Vijayanagara and Inca empires, and in the Aztec Triple Alliance?73
Eine Geschichte der Einsperrung in Sachsen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Konstanz, 2008); Andreas Gestrich and Raphael Lutz, eds., Inklusion/Exklusion. Studien zu Fremdheit und Armut von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart (Frankfurt, 2008); Gerhard Ammerer et al., eds., Orte der Verwahrung. Die innere Organisation von Gefängnissen, Hospitälern und Klöstern seit dem Spätmittelalter (Leipzig, 2010); Isabelle Heullant-Donat, Julie Claustre, and Élisabeth Lusset, eds., Enfermements. Le cloître et la prison (VIe–XVIIIe siècle) (Paris, 2011). 71 Colvin, Penitentiaries, Reformatories, and Chain Gangs. 72 For a clear discussion of these two interpretations, see Spierenburg, The Prison Experience, 1–11. 73 The following articles deal with these contexts, but reveal the difficulty of finding specific information on convict labour: Sally Falk Moore, Power and Property in Inca Peru (New York, 1958); Heinz Dieterich, “Some Theoretical and Methodological Observations about the Inca Empire and the Asiatic Mode of Production,” Latin American Perspectives, 9:4 (1982), 111–132; Geoffrey W. Conrad and Arthur A. Demarest, Religion and Empire: The Dynamics of Aztec and Inca Expansionism (New York, 1984); Michael E. Smith and Frances
Together with the fragmentation of sub-disciplines corresponding to regimes of punishment and temporal limitations imposed by teleological assumptions of modernity and progress, the insufficient knowledge of non-Western areas is the other fundamental limitation of the available literature on convict labour. Moreover, not only does the historiography focus more on “the West” than on “the Rest,” most of the research is marked by a Eurocentricism that takes the alleged progressive penal development of incarceration, rehabilitation, and social control associated with modernity as its template. This blind spot is in fact common to both the liberal humanitarian narrative and the critical anti- Enlightenment perspective, such as that provided by the Foucauldian approach to correctional history. Merely adding narratives of convict labour outside “the West” would then not be sufficient to move beyond this Eurocentric approach.74 A non-Eurocentric understanding can emerge only when narratives, interpre- tations, and concepts are reconsidered from an integrated global perspective that no longer privileges the development of Western penal history, whether as a humane model or the poisoned taproot of total bio-power. As with many other fields of research, colonial and post-colonial studies today represent the most innovative methodological sub-discipline within the historiography of convict labour. For although they too risk reproducing a form of Eurocentrism – the history of non-European countries considered only as far as European colonization is involved – the post-colonial awareness of the need to radically rethink Eurocentric categories allows us to reconsider convict labour within a global framework. Not surprisingly then, it is in a recent survey article on the “tensions of colonial punishment” that Taylor C. Sherman has proposed the concept of a “coercive network” as a new framework to understand the mutual connections between different regimes of punishment
F. Berdan, “Archaeology of the Aztec Empire,” World Archaeology, 23:3 (1992), 353–367; Irene Schneider, “Imprisonment in Pre-Classical and Classical Islamic Law,” Islamic Law and Society, 2:2 (1995), 157–173; Carla M. Sinopoli and Kathleen D. Morrison, “Dimensions of Imperial Control: The Vijayanagara Capital,” American Anthropologist, 97:1 (1995), 83–96. From a general point of view, the importance of expanding the perspective both to the pre-1500 period and to non-European experiences has been shown by Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System ad 1250–1350 (New York and Oxford, 1989). 74 For a similar point about the limitations of a Eurocentric view of prison history see Gibson, “Global Perspectives on the Birth of the Prison.” In some of the 1980s’ and 1990s’ historiography on colonial prisons, for instance, the inapplicability of Foucault’s Surveiller et punir scheme to the colonial systems of confinement had been observed, but it was framed in terms of the “pre-modernity” and the “backwardness” of the colonies rather than questioning Foucault’s interpretation. On this see Sherman, “Tensions of Colonial Punishment.”
75 Ibid., 669. 76 Clare Anderson, “Convict Transportation in the Indian Ocean,” paper for the “Global Convict Labour” conference (Amsterdam, 12–13 June 2012). The awareness of the need for a global and long-term perspective is also shown by the international conference on “Colonial Places, Convict Spaces: Penal Transportation in Global Context, c. 1600–1940” (Department of Economic & Social History, University of Leicester, 9–10 December 1999). The proceedings of the conference have never been published. Abstracts of the papers are available at
Theory, 45 (2006), 30–50; Ulrike Freitag and Achim von Oppen, eds., Translocality: The Study of Globalising Processes from a Southern Perspective (Leiden and Boston, 2010); van der Linden, Workers of the World, 372–378 [on the concept of “teleconnections”]. For examples of a biographical or prosopographical approach to this social history, see Cassandra Pybus, “The African Diaspora at the End of the World,” in Dawne Curry, Eric Duke, and Marshanda Smith, eds., Extending the Diaspora: New Histories of Black People (Urbana, 2009), 157–177; Ian Duffield, “From Slave Colonies to Penal Colonies: The West Indian Convict Transportees to Australia,” Slavery and Abolition, 7:1 (1986), 25–45, as well as several of the papers presented at the “Colonial Places, Convict Spaces: Penal Transportation in Global Context, c. 1600–1940” conference. For a recent example of the application of this method, see Anderson, Subaltern Lives. 79 McLennan, Crisis of Imprisonment; Robert T. Chase, “‘Slaves of the State’ Revolt: Southern Prison Labor and a Prison-Made Civil Rights Movement, 1945–1980,” in Robert Zieger, ed., Life and Labor in the New New South (Gainesville, 2012); Alex Lichtenstein, “Twice the Work of Free Labor? Labor, Punishment, and the Task System in Georgia’s Convict Mines,” in Gary Fink and Merl Reed, eds., Race, Class, and Community in Southern Labor History (Tuscaloosa, 1994); Barnes, Death and Redemption: The Gulag and the Shaping of Soviet Society (Princeton, 2011), Ch. 6; idem, “‘In a Manner Befitting Soviet Citizens’: An Uprising in the Post-Stalin Gulag,” Slavic Review, 64:4 (2005), 823–850. 80 Karin A. Shapiro, A New South Rebellion: The Battle against Convict Labor in the Tennessee Coalfields, 1871–1896 (Chapel Hill and London, 1998); Brian Greenberg, Worker and Community: Response to Industrialization in a Nineteenth-century American City, Albany, New York, 1850–1884 (Albany, 1984). See also “The Struggle against the Introduction of
(Heather Thompson’s contribution to this volume offers one especially interest- ing approach.) However, scholars have pointed to the importance of four aspects of this relationship: first, the “disciplining effect of convict labour” on free labour; secondly, the need to look at specific productive sectors when considering the issue of economic competition between convict and “free” labour; thirdly, the importance of labour organizations in limiting convict labour to state-owned sectors and, more often, to “domestic” labour inside penal establishments; and, fourthly, the perceived “competition” of convict labour does not simply entail economic factors, but also relates to the negative image that convict labour could have shed on a particular class of people or on a certain location. In the latter case, opposition to convict labour could typi- cally be expected from merchants and small entrepreneurs. On the other hand, at least in the recent history of the us, punishment has served as an engine of community economic redevelopment and job creation through “carceral Keynesianism” and in privatized corrections.81 Other visible gaps in the historiography regard the custodians and the impact of imprisonment and exile on convicts’ families and friends.82 More
Convict and Reformatory Labour into Natal,” Archives Year Book for South African History (1967), 2 vols; Thomas Mathiesen, The Politics of Abolition (London, 1974); Gildemeister, Prison Labor and Convict Competition; McLennan, Crisis of Imprisonment; Kenneth Morgan, “Petitions against Convict Transportation, 1725–1735,” The English Historical Review, 104:410 (1989), 110–113. See also the special issue of Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas (2011), including Alex Lichtenstein, “A ‘Labor History’ of Mass Incarceration,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, 8:3 (2011), 5–14. 81 Alex Lichtenstein and Michael A. Kroll, “The Fortress Economy: The Economic Role of the us Prison System,” in Elihu Rosenblatt, ed., Criminal Injustice: Confronting the Prison Crisis (Boston, 1996); Heather A. Thompson, “Why Mass Incarceration Matters: Rethinking Crisis, Decline and Transformation in Postwar American History,” The Journal of American History, 97:3 (2010), 703–734; Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster (New York, 1999), 416; idem, “Hell Factories in the Field: A Prison-Industrial Complex,” The Nation, 260:7 (20 February 1995). 82 On prison guards see, for example, Ted Conover, Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing (New York, 2001); Norval Morris, Maconochie’s Gentlemen: The Story of Norfolk Island and the Roots of Modern Prison Reform (New York, 2003); Fyodor V. Mochulsky, Gulag Boss: A Soviet Memoir (New York, 2011); Joshua Page, The Toughest Beat: Politics, Punishment, and the Prison Officers’ Union in California (New York, 2011); and Heather Thompson’s chapter in this volume. On family and community, see, for example, Curtin, Black Prisoners and their World; Wendy Z. Goldman, Inventing the Enemy: Denunciation and Terror in Stalin’s Russia (Cambridge, 2011); Gheith and Jolluck, Gulag Voices, Chs 7–10; Cathy A. Frierson and Semyon S. Vilensky, Children of the Gulag (New Haven, 2010), Chs 4–6. Attempts at a social history of penal life have been made, especially for penal colonies.
83 Carlos Aguirre, The Criminals of Lima and Their Worlds: The Prison Experience, 1850–1935 (Durham, 2005). On Marxism and lumpenproletariat see, for instance, Hal Draper, “The Concept of the ‘Lumpenproletariat’ in Marx and Engels,” Économies et Sociétés, 6 (1972), 2285–2312; Frank Bovenkerk, “The Rehabilitation of the Rabble. How and Why Marx and Engels Wrongly Depicted the Lumpenproletariat as a Reactionary Force,” The Netherlands Journal of Sociology, 20:1 (1984), 13–41; Peter Hayes, “Utopia and the Lumpenproletariat. Marx’s Reasoning in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” Review of Politics, 50:3 (1988), 445–465. 84 Among the available studies: Claudie Lesselier, “Les femmes et la prison 1820–1939. Prison de femmes et reproduction de la société patriarcale,” in Jacques-Guy Petit, ed., La prison, le bagne et l’histoire (Paris and Geneva, 1984); Odile Krakovitch, Les femmes bagnardes (Paris, 1990); Enzo Campelli et al., Donne in carcere. Ricerca sulla detenzione femminile in Italia (Milan, 1992); Joy Damousi, “‘Depravity and Disorder’: The Sexuality of Convict Women,” Labour History, 68 (1995), 30–45; Deborah Oxley, Convict Maids: The Forced Migration of Women to Australia (Cambridge, 1996); Maria S. Zárate, “Vicious Women, Virtuous Women: The Female Delinquent and the Santiago de Chile Correctional House, 1860–1900,” in Salvatore and Aguirre, The Birth of the Penitentiary, 78–100; Kay Daniels, Convict Women (Sydney, 1998); Eleanor Conlin Casella, “‘Doing Trade’: A Sexual Economy of Nineteenth-Century Australian Female Convict Prisons,” World Archaeology, 32:2 (2000), 209–221; Anthony L. Pillay, “Prisoners are Women too: A Case Study of Women Prisoners at Westville Prison,” Alternation, 7:2 (2000), 156–169; Mary Gibson, “Le carceri femminili nell’Italia liberale,” Storica, 16 (2000), 135–154; Donna J. Guy, “Girls in Prison: The Role of the Buenos Aires Casa Correccional de Mujeres as an Institution for Child Rescue, 1890–1940,” in Salvatore, Aguirre, and Joseph, eds., Crime and Punishment in Latin America, 369–390; Satadru Sen, “The Female Jails of Colonial India,” Indian Economic and Social History Review, 39:2 (2002), 417–438; Mara L. Dodge, ‘Whores and Thieves of the Worst Kind’: A Study of Women, Crime, and Prisons, 1835–2000 (DeKalb, Ill., 2002); Kristin Ruggiero, “‘Houses of Deposit’ and the Exclusion of Women in Turn-of-the-Century Argentina,” in Carolyn Strange and Alison Bashford, eds., Isolation: Places and Practices of Exclusion (New York, 2003), 111–124; Simona Trombetta, Punizione e carità. Carceri femminili nell’Italia dell’Ottocento (Bologna, 2004); Sandra Leukel, Strafanstalt und Geschlecht. Geschichte des Frauenstrafvollzugs im 19. Jahrhundert (Baden und Preußen) (Leipzig 2010); Guy Geltner, “No-Woman’s Land? On Female Crime and Incarceration, Past, Present, and Future,” Justice Policy Journal, 7:2 (2010); Talitha LeFlouria, “‘The Hand
that Rocks the Cradle Cuts Cordwood’: Exploring Black Women’s Lives and Labor in Georgia’s Convict Camps, 1865–1917,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, 8:3 (2011), 47–63; Judith Pallot and Laura Piacentini, Gender, Geography, and Punishment: The Experience of Women in Carceral Russia (Oxford, 2012). 85 For some studies on juvenile convict labour, see, for example, Marie-Sylvie Dupont- Bouchat, De la prison à l’école. Les pénitenciers pour enfants en Belgique au XIXe siècle (1840–1914) (Kortrijk, 1996); idem and Éric Pierre, eds., Enfance et justice au XIXe siècle. Essais d’histoire comparée de la protection de l’enfance 1820–1914 (Paris, 2001); Castan and Zysberg, Histoire de galères; Margo De Koster, “Jongeren en criminaliteit: Een lange geschiedenis van de Middeleeuwen tot heden,” Tijdschrift voor Criminologie, 52:3 (2010), 308–317; Frierson and Vilensky, Children of the Gulag, 6–63. For the French case, see also the special issue of the Revue d’histoire de l’enfance irrégulière, 7 (2005). 86 A preliminary question is of course that of defining “political prisoner.” For some refer- ences on political prisoners’ resistance, see Ujjwal Kumar Singh, Political Prisoners in India (New Delhi, 1998); Peter Zinoman, “Colonial Prisons and Anti-Colonial Resistance in French Indochina: The Thai Nguyen Rebellion, 1917,” Modern Asia Studies, 34:1 (2000), 57–98; Laurence McKeown, Out of Time: Irish Republican Prisoners, Long Kesh 1972–2000 (Belfast, 2001); Fran L. Buntman, Robben Island and Prisoner Resistance to Apartheid (New York, 2003); Paul Gready, Writing as Resistance: Life Stories of Imprisonment, Exile, and Homecoming from Apartheid South Africa (Oxford, 2003); David Arnold, “The Self and the Cell: Indian Prison Narratives as Life Histories,” in idem and Stuart Blackburn, eds., Telling Lives in India: Biography, Autobiography, and Life History (New Delhi, 2004), 29–53; Philip F. Williams and Yenna Wu, eds., Remolding and Resistance Among Writers of the Chinese Prison Camp (New York, 2006); Fernando Rule, Un allegro muy largo: de la vida social y cultural en las cárceles de la dictadura militar argentina, 1976–1983 (Buenos Aires, 2006); Maria Rita Prette, ed., Il carcere speciale (Dogliani, 2006); Clare Anderson, The Indian Uprising of 1857–8: Prisons, Prisoners and Rebellion (London, 2007). 87 See, for instance, Lucy Frost and Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, Chain Letters: Narrating Convict Lives (Melbourne, 2001); Clare Anderson, “The Bel Ombre Rebellion: Indian Convicts in Mauritius, 1815–53,” in Gwyn Campbell, ed., Abolition and Its Aftermath in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia (London, 2005), 46–59; Clare Anderson, “‘The Ferringees are Flying – the Ship is Ours!’: The Convict Middle Passage in Colonial South and Southeast
Asia, 1790–1860,” Indian Economic and Social History Review, 42:2 (2005), 143–186; idem, “Sepoys, Servants and Settlers: Convict Transportation in the Indian Ocean, 1787–1945,” in Dikötter and Brown, Cultures of Confinement, 185–220; Anang A. Yang, “Indian Convict Workers in Southeast Asia in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries,” Journal of World History, 14:2 (2003), 179–208. 88 See, for instance, Caplan and Wachsmann, Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany; Barnes, “‘In a Manner Befitting Soviet Citizens’.” 89 See, for instance, Curtin, Black Prisoners and Their World. See also Charles van Onselen, “Crime and Total Institutions in the Making of Modern South Africa: The Life of Nongoloza Mathebula, 1867–1948,” History Workshop, 19 (1985), 62–81; McLennan, Crisis of Imprisonment; Chase, “‘Slaves of the State’ Revolt.” 90 Norman S. Hayner and Ellis Ash, “The Prisoner Community as a Social Group,” American Sociological Review, 4:3 (1939), 362–363; Donald Clemmer, The Prison Community (Boston, 1940); Morris G. Caldwell, “Group Dynamics in the Prison Community,” The Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology and Police Science, 46:5 (1956), 648–657; Gresham M. Sykes, The Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum Security Prison (Princeton, 1958); Erving Goffman, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (New York, 1961); Thomas Mathiesen, The Defences of the Weak: A Sociological Study of a Norwegian Correctional Institution (London, 1965); James B. Jacobs, Stateville: The Penitentiary in Mass Society (Chicago and London, 1977); Falk Bretschneider, Martin Scheutz, and Alfred Stefan Weiß, eds., Personal und Insassen von „Totalen Institutionen“ – zwischen Konfrontation und Verflechtung (Leipzig, 2011). 91 Mathiesen, The Politics of Abolition; Rebelión en las cárceles (Madrid, 1978); Robert Adams, Prison Riots in Britain and the usa (Houndmills, 1994); Philippe Artières, Laurent Quéro, and Michelle Zancarini-Fournel, eds., Le Groupe d’information sur les prisons. Archives d’une lutte, 1970–1972 (Paris, 2003); César L. Rubio, “La revuelta de los comunes. El mov- imiento de presos sociales durante la Transición,” in Por la memoria anticapitalista. Reflexiones sobre la autonomía (Madrid, 2008); Hans Smits, Strafrechthervormers en hemelbestormers. Opkomst en teloorgang van de Coornhert-Liga (Amsterdam, 2008);
The lack of attention paid to agency also appears as the major weakness of the vast, and heterogeneous, social science literature on the process of mass- (or hyper-) incarceration in the us and elsewhere since the 1990s.92 Here, abstract forces such as “Globalization,” “Neoliberalism” – and, in the us, either the “Prison-industrial complex” or the “Penal State” – are described as imposing control on the “post-industrial proletariat,” “multitudes,” and “poor” through incarceration. Although they have played an important role in creating aware- ness of the political relevance of this on-going process, these accounts produce a sense of inevitability and thus impotence, precisely because they do not effec- tively identify specific agents that either promote or resist the shift in penal policy. (The chapter included here, by Heather Thompson, marks an important exception.) Moreover, they typically refer exclusively to Western penal systems – and most often to the us – but generalize their conclusions to the whole world, and fail to provide a broader framework to locate this process historically.
Christian G. De Vito and Silvia Vaiani, “Ci siamo presi la libertà di lottare. Movimenti dei detenuti in Europa Occidentale,” Zapruder, 16 (2008), 8–22; Thompson, “Rethinking Working Class Struggle”; Perkinson, Texas Tough; Chase, “‘Slaves of the State’ Revolt.” For a recent example of work on the prisoners’ rights movement and Black power, see Donald F. Tibbs, From Black Power to Prison Power: The Making of Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners’ Labor Union (New York, 2011). 92 For some contributions to this debate see Loïc Wacquant, Les prisons de la misère (Paris, 1999) [English edition: Prisons of Poverty (Minneapolis, 2009)]; Alessandro De Giorgi, Zero tolleranza. Strategie e pratiche della società di controllo (Rome, 2000); Nils Christie, Crime Control as Industry: Towards Gulags, Western Style (New York, 2000); David Garland, ed., Mass Imprisonment: Social Causes and Consequences (London and Thousand Oaks, 2001); Roger Matthews and Peter Francis, eds., Prisons 2000: An International Perspective on the Current State and Future of Imprisonment (Houndmills and London, 2001); Dirk van Zyl Smit and Frieder Dünkel, eds., Imprisonment Today and Tomorrow: International Perspectives on Prisoners’ Rights and Prison Conditions (The Hague, 2001); Philippe Artières and Pierre Lascoumes, eds., Gouverner, enfermer. La prison, un modèle indépassable? (Paris, 2004); Lucia Re, Carcere e globalizzazione. Il boom penitenziario negli Stati Uniti e in Europa (Rome, 2006); Thompson, “Why Mass Incarceration Matters”; Mary Louise Frampton, Ian Haney López, and Jonathan Simon, eds., After the War on Crime: Race, Democracy, and a New Reconstruction (New York, 2008); Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (Berkeley, 2007); Loïc Wacquant, Punishing the Poor. The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity (Durham, 2009); Loïc Wacquant, “Class, Race and Hyperincarceration in Revanchist America,” Daedalus, 139:3 (2010), 74–90; Loïc Wacquant, “Prisoner Re-entry as Myth and Ceremony,” Dialectical Anthropology, 34 (2010), 605–620; Markus-Michael Müller, “The Rise of the Penal State in Latin America,” 15:1 (2012), 57–76.
The same limitations characterize the way convict labour itself is approached in this strand of literature. Most frequently absent from the picture, it is otherwise depicted as an undifferentiated form of “modern slavery” in a way that suggests a regression to earlier stages of civilization. However, when contemporary convict labour is looked at through a global and comparative perspective the same intertwining of economic, social, political, and cultural factors appears that has operated in previous historical contexts.93 Moreover, as in the past, convict labour in the contemporary world is not limited to penal institutions. Labour camps, in particular, continue to play an important role, as the Chinese laojiao and laogai dramatically show. In considerably large parts of “the West,” however, even while incarceration expands as a form of punishment, in the twenty-first century penal labour itself often appears redundant. So much so that in Western European penal institutions, for instance, many prisoners actually ask for more (paid and contractualized) work. It is outside the scope of this essay to predict whether this will prove to be a temporary and “localized” phenomenon or a new long- term and global trend. Suffice it here to say, from a methodological perspective, that as these contemporary issues show, the forces that have led to the emer- gence of convict labour in certain historical contexts could actually be reversed. We maintain that this holds true for the past as well, and that an analysis is thus needed of the objective and subjective factors that have led away from the exploitation of penal labour in relation to certain categories of or even all prisoners in a given time and space. Under what conditions does punishment not produce rehabilitative or retributive convict labour? Why is there no convict labour? By answering these questions, dramatic human experiences may emerge, such as exile, repatriation, extreme isolation (as in us “supermax” prisons), extermination, and genocide or attempted genocide, not to mention the more mundane tasks of simply managing “surplus” populations in a post-industrial political economy.94 But this approach might also reveal new patterns of agency, resistance, alternatives, and, perhaps, abolition.
93 Dirk van Zyl Smit and Frieder Dünkel, eds., Prison Labour: Salvation or Slavery? (London, 1999); Evelyne Shea, Le travail pénitentiaire: un défi européen. Etude comparée: France, Angleterre, Allemagne (Paris, 2006); Jeremy Sarkin, “Global Prison Crisis: How Does Africa Rate?” South African Labour Bulletin, 32:5 (2008), 25–27. 94 See, for instance, James Walston, “History and Memory of the Italian Concentration Camps,” The Historical Journal, 40:1 (1997), 169–183; Michele Frucht Levy, “The Ustaša Genocide against Serbs: 1941–1945,” in Marianne Neerland Soleim, ed., Prisoners of War and Forced Labour: Histories of War and Occupation (Cambridge, 2010), 89–104.
PART 1 Genealogies of Convict Labour
∵
chapter 1 Contextualising Condemnation to Hard Labour in the Roman Empire1
Miriam J. Groen-Vallinga and Laurens E. Tacoma
Introduction
It is apparent even from this volume that convict labour has been studied most vigorously for the Early Modern and Modern period. In consequence, Roman convict labour has been far outside of the scope of most investigations. However, there are good reasons to integrate it into a global history. Not only was the concept of putting convicted criminals to work quite fami liar to the Romans, but it has also been argued that Roman practices and Roman legal rules served as a template for the modern world:
In Western societies, the legal basis and underlying model for forced labor is Roman. (…) [T]he legal foundation for using forced labor as a punishment was laid down by the ancient Romans, and their use of galley rowers, forced laborers in mines, and others put to public works. Roman law also established the legal basis for relegation or banishment in most Western societies.2
Western systems of forced labour were undoubtedly rooted in Roman law. This quote, however, also illustrates two common misunderstandings about the Roman period: the Romans had no galley rowers, and relegation or banish ment in Roman times had little to do with convict labour. It unwittingly makes clear that there is an urgent need to establish what exactly these Roman
1 This chapter was presented for two seminars in Amsterdam in December 2012; our thanks to the participants for their many helpful comments. Our title is a reference to Millar’s pivotal article: Fergus Millar, “Condemnation to Hard Labour in the Roman Empire, from the Julio-Claudians to Constantine,” Papers of the British School at Rome, 52 (1984), 124–147; repr. in idem, Rome, the Greek World, and the East. vol 2. Government, Society & Culture (eds., M. Cotton and G.M. Rogers) (Chapel Hill and London 2004) 120–150. 2 Timothy J. Coates, “European Forced Labor in the Early Modern Era” in David Eltis and Stanley L. Engerman, eds., The Cambridge World History of Slavery, (Cambridge, 2011), 631; see also Timothy J. Coates, Convicts and Orphans: Forced and State-Sponsored Colonizers in the Portuguese Empire, 1550–1755 (Stanford, 2001), 4, 22.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004285026_003
3 Millar, “Condemnation to Hard Labour”; Stanisław Mrozek, “Zur Frage der Verbreitung von Strafgefangenenarbeit in Römischen Bergwerken,” Eos, 55 (1965) provides an earlier, brief account; Domenico Lassandro, “I ‘damnati in metalla’ in alcune testimonianze antiche,” in Marta Sordi, ed., Coercizione e mobilità umana nel mondo antico (Milan, 1995) has little to add. Francesco Salerno, “Ad metalla.” Aspetti Giuridici del Lavoro in Miniera (Naples, 2003) discusses the legal context. The otherwise perceptive analysis of the labour force employed in the mines of Jean Andreau, “Recherches Récentes sur les Mines à l’Époque Romaine II: La Nature de la Main-d’oeuvre; Histoire des Techniques et de la Production,” Revue Numismatique, 32 (1990), 85–94 has surprisingly little to say on convict labour. 4 J.G. Davies, “Condemnation to the Mines: A Neglected Chapter in the History of the Persecutions,” University of Birmingham Historical Journal, 6 (1958); Juan De Churruca, “Confesseurs Non Condamnés à Mort dans le Procès Contre les Chrètiens de Lyon l’Année 177,” Vigiliae Christianae, 38 (1984); Mark Gustafson, “Condemnation to the Mines in the Later Roman Empire,” Harvard Theological Review, 87 (1994). 5 Of which Theodor Mommsen, Römisches Strafrecht (Leipzig, 1899) remains fundamental. 6 For the mines see in particular the overview articles, Jean Andreau, “Recherches Récentes sur les Mines à l’Époque Romaine,” Revue Numismatique, 31 (1989), and Andreau, “Recherches rècentes II”; Andreau, “Recherches récentes,” 87–88, complains that the copious literature on Roman mining has not entered discussions of the Roman economy. His complaint still rings true, though cf. Paul Erdkamp et al., eds., Land and Natural Resources (forthcoming). 7 A similar lack of interest among scholars of Roman law is noted by Salerno, “Ad metalla,” 1.
8 Millar, “Condemnation to Hard Labour,” 137–138. We are unaware of visual representations of convicts; cf. Eckart Köhne and Cornelia Ewigleben, Gladiators and Caesars: The Power of Spectacle in Ancient Rome (London, 2000), 126, fig. 136, for a third-century relief depicting the transport of damnati ad bestias, now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; and J. Webster, “Routes to Slavery in the Roman World: A Comparative Perspective on the Archaeology of Forced Migration,” in: H. Eckardt, ed., Roman Diasporas. Archaeological Approaches to Mobility and Diversity in the Roman Empire (Portsmouth), 48 fig. 4.2 for bronze figurines of bound captives, presumably slaves, found in Roman Britain and along the Rhine-Danube frontier. 9 See e.g. Pl., n.h. 33.70-78. Likewise, a small passage in Polyb. 34.10.10 apud Strabo 4.6.12 about the collaboration between Romans and locals in a Republican mine in Noricum probably refers to its exploitation rather than to its workforce. 10 Ramsey MacMullen, “Judicial Savagery in the Roman Empire,” Chiron 16 (1986), 148; Lassandro, “I ‘damnati in metalla’,” 273: “nella damnatio in metalla, cui i seguaci della nuova fede venivano spesso condannati, essi vedono uno dei mezzi per testimoniare, come afferma Tertulliano, l’obstinatio fidei.” 11 A somewhat similar glorifying perspective from the pagan side is visible in Philostratos, Life of Apollonios 5.18.2, where we meet the philosopher Musonius Rufus who is put to work at Nero’s project to dig a canal through the Isthmus at Corinth. But even apart from the fact that the story is probably fictitious, dissenting philosophers were normally exiled rather than sentenced to convict labour, and in consequence such stories are extremely rare. 12 See, for example, Mattingly’s remark that the literary accounts of Eusebius can mostly be dated to a short period of intense persecution only: David Mattingly et al., “A Landscape
of Imperial Power: Roman and Byzantine Phaino,” in David Mattingly et al., eds., Archaeology and Desertification: The Wadi Faynan Landscape Survey, Southern Jordan (Oxford, 2007), 333. 13 See now W.S. Scheidel, “Slavery and Forced Labour in Early China and the Roman World,” to appear in: C. Laes and K. Verboven, eds., Work, Labor and Professions in the Roman World. Consulted at
Early Modern West, it is said that “forced labor in this sense requires the exis tence of a state.”16 Ancient literary sources demonstrate that convicts were often put to work in imperial quarries or mines, which does indeed suggest a certain amount of government intervention, but it will become clear that the coercive network in the Roman empire had a strong local component as well. It seems likely that wherever forced labour is attested, convicts toiled side by side with free, freed, and unfree others. The question arises how convict labour relates to the overall labour market, particularly because on the one hand eco nomic motivations for the employment of damnati appear to be limited in the Roman situation,17 but on the other hand, the extensive integration of convict labour seems to preclude the existence of a reformatory ideal. In conclusion, we hope to shed some light on the question what the history of Roman convict labour means for the global history of convict labour.
The Roman Penal System18
The Roman penal system was status-dependent: status, rather than crime, determined the penalty.19 The system operated on the basis of major
16 Coates, “European Forced Labor,” 633. 17 Millar, “Condemnation to Hard Labour,” 143; Hélène Cuvigny, “La Mort et la Maladie,” in Mons Claudianus: Ostraca Graeca et Latina. 3: Reçus Pour Avances à La Familia: O. Claud. 417 à 631, edd. Jean Bingen and Hélène Cuvigny (Cairo, 2000), 52 states that the quarries at Mons Claudianus were “intentionellement antiéconomique,” a symbol of imperial power; Timothy J. Coates (this volume) notes that the Portuguese system of forced labour, too, was “ultimately uneconomic.” Cf. Diod. Sic. 3.12.2 for a rudimentary argument that in the Ptolemaic gold mines punishment and economic gains went hand in hand; On the cost and benefits of convict labour in general (focusing on the colonial empires), see Taylor C. Sherman, “Tensions of Colonial Punishment: Perspectives on Recent Developments in the Study of Coercive Networks in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean,” History Compass, 7.3 (2009), 660–664. 18 In view of our intended readership we have deliberately kept technical terminology and detailed juridical discussion to a minimum. See Jean-Jacques Aubert, “A Double Standard in Roman Criminal Law? The Death Penalty and Social Structure in Late Republican and Early Imperial Rome,” in Jean-Jacques Aubert and Boudewijn Sirks, eds., Speculum Iuris: Roman Law as a Reflection of Social and Economic Life in Antiquity (Ann Arbor, 2002) for a brief, but thoughtful essay on a related theme, with further bibliography. Salerno, “Ad metalla” for full discussion. 19 This status-dependency of punishments is also known from the early modern and mod ern periods, e.g. Coates (this volume).
20 Peter Garnsey, Social Status and Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1970) for the dual-penalty system. 21 Although the distinction between the honestiores and humiliores became formalised, who belonged to it remained subject to interpretation; members of local elites could find themselves in-between – their claims to privilege were often violated. It is also open to question to what extent slaves remained a separate category below the humiliores; see Aubert, “A Double Standard?,” who argues that they did. 22 E.g. Diod.Sic. 5.36-38. 23 Juv., Sat. 8.180; Apul., Met. 9.12, with Millar, “Condemnation to Hard Labour,” 126.
24 Strabo 12.3.40. 25 The idea goes back at least to Mommsen, Römisches Strafrecht, see e.g. 949: “Die Zwangsarbeit ist dem republikanischen Strafrecht unbekannt und unter dem Principat aufgekommen.” See Salerno, “Ad metalla,” 36–37 for references to other literature. 26 So Millar, “Condemnation to Hard Labour,” 145, referring to a “radical innovation” in penal principles and practice with the coming of the Principate. We remain sceptical. 27 Cicero, In Verrem 2.5.158-169. A similar case of the imperial period is described in Pl., Ep. 2.11, where a governor is bribed to condemn a Roman knight to the mines. Cf. Pl., Ep. 10.58 for other forms of status conflicts. See also Suet. Cal. 27.3, where the fact that the
Verres had been governor of the province Sicily from 73 to 71 bce. On his return to Rome he was accused of extortion and brought before a jury-court. Among the accusations listed by Cicero was the fact that Verres, during his governor ship, had condemned a man named Publius Gavius to the quarries of Syracuse.28 Gavius, however, claimed to be a Roman citizen. He managed to escape, but was recaptured when he was about to cross from Sicily to the Italian mainland with the purpose of going to Rome to obtain redress. The hap less Gavius was brought before Verres, who had him flogged and subsequently crucified in the city centre. Cicero’s accusation was not the fact that such dra conic penalties were imposed, or that they were a novelty, nor even that they were imposed in such an arbitrary fashion – he censured that the measures had been imposed on a Roman citizen:
Does freedom, that precious thing, mean nothing? nor the proud privi leges of a citizen of Rome? (…) You dared to crucify any living man who claimed to be a Roman citizen?29
Provincials, then, could be tried as the governor saw fit, but Roman citizens had the right to be tried at Rome, by the type of court that Verres now was judged in himself.30 Citizens were not to be subjected to corpo real punishments, and violating this principle was a crime against the Roman state:
emperor Caligula condemns senators to the mines, to building of roads and to be thrown to the beasts on trivial charges functions as an emblem of his deranged mind and trans gressive behaviour. In a much later imperial ruling, Coll. 15.3.6-7 of ce 302, in punishments of Manichees the status distinction itself was upheld, but condemnation to the mines was used as a milder penalty for persons of high status instead of the death penalty. 28 Cicero, In Verrem 2.5.158-169. These quarries are also known from a much earlier period: they were the place were the Syracusans imprisoned the Athenians for several months after their failed attempt to capture Syracuse in 413 bce, see Thuc. 7.86.2; 7.87.1-4. 29 Cicero, In Verrem, 2.5.163: “O nomen dulce libertatis! o ius eximium nostrae civitatis! (…) In crucem tu agere ausus es quemquam qui se civem Romanum esse diceret?”; trans. L.H.G. Greenwood, The Verrine Orations vol II ( London etc., 1935), cf. 2.1.14, where Cicero claims Verres had condemned many Roman citizens to the Syracusan quarries. 30 Cf. Millar, “Condemnation to Hard Labour,” 137: “there is nothing to suggest that the con demnation of free men to metallum was a feature of Republican jurisprudence” – this remark is in itself correct, but only applies to free Roman citizens – and it was of course violated by Verres. See also Aubert, “A Double Standard?,” 119, who argues that from Verres’ point of view Gavius was a traitor who thereby had automatically lost his citizenship.
It was not Gavius against whom your hate was then displayed: you declared war upon the whole principle of the rights of the Roman citizen body. You were the enemy, I say again, not of that individual man, but of the common liberties of us all.31
Verres, incidentally, did not wait for the outcome of his own trial, but was allowed to go into voluntary exile – unwittingly nicely illustrating the enor mous discrepancies in penal regimes. The provincial setting of justice like that found in the Verres-episode, became more widely implemented as a broader system of trials before an offi cial was introduced under the empire. Any offence could now be tried in front of a judge, a magistrate, who might be a provincial governor like Verres had been, a praetorian prefect, or even the emperor himself.32 All of them were more (in the case of the emperor) or less (in the case of all others) free to sen tence as they saw fit and were not bound to any predefined set of penalties.33 Penalties could be brutal and were characterised by dehumanisation and sadism. Crucifixion was quite normal.34 Executions were staged in public. All of these elements were already present in the Verres-episode: the governor had Gavius crucified in the market place, the symbolic heart of the city, rather than outside the city, which was the normal place for burials and executions. Allegedly Verres had added sarcastically in public that he “had purposely cho sen the spot to give this man a view of Italy and a prospect of his home country as he hung on his cross, since he claimed to be a Roman citizen.”35 Gradually we hear of ever more sadistic forms of punishments. The most notorious form was that criminals could be condemned to be thrown to the wild beasts.
31 Cicero, In Verrem 2.5.169: “quasi tu Gavio tum fueris infestus, ac non nomini, generi, iuri civium hostis. Non illi, inquam, homini, sed causae communi libertatis inimicus fuisti.” 32 Salerno, “Ad metalla,” 79–81. 33 Garnsey, Social Status and Legal Privilege, 5–6, 103 with Dig. 48.19.13 (Ulpian). A limited type of protection was offered in the sense that condemnations could not be made in absentia, see Salerno, “Ad metalla,” 61–63. 34 John G. Cook, “Crucifixion as Spectacle in Roman Campania,” Novum Testamentum, 54 (2012) with further recent bibliography. 35 Cicero, In Verrem 2.5.169: te idcirco illum locum deligere, ut ille, quoniam se civem Romanum esse diceret, ex cruce Italiam cernere ac domum suam prospicere posset? Transl. Greenwood, The Verrine Orations, with minor adaptations. Something similar happened a century later, when Galba, the future emperor, ordered someone to be crucified; when the latter protested because he was a Roman citizen, in a mocking gesture of solace and honour he ordered him to be crucified on a higher cross painted white. Suet., Galb. 9.1, with Aubert, “A Double Standard?,” 117.
Less well documented, but equally chilling, were so-called fatal charades: the condemned were forced to play roles in the theatre in mythical or historical re-enactments that ended with their deaths.36 Despite its gruesome character, condemnation to hard labour was one of the milder penalties that could be imposed. Condemnation to the mines was a common penalty for cattle rustling, theft at night, kidnapping, movement of boundary stones and forgery.37 The fact that many other crimes were also occasionally punished with metalla reinforces the idea that judges had room for manoeuvre.38 In fact, the one surviving report of a court ruling in which someone was convicted to the mines concerned “someone who loved his girl- friend too much, caught her with another man, and, overcome with anger, killed her with a sword.” In this court-case, the fact that the perpetrator was “possessed by love” was taken into account, and the sentence to the mines was justified with the words “so that you will remember what you have done to her.” There can be little doubt that in this case the alternative was capital punishment.39 From the second century onwards we also frequently hear of Christians condemned to the mines for their faith40 – until the beginning of the fourth century being a Christian was in itself considered a crime. When Christianity became the accepted religion, however, very little changed in the application of the penalty of hard labour: as a result of the theological disputes that
36 Kathleen M. Coleman, “Fatal Charades: Roman Executions Staged as Mythological Enactments,” Journal of Roman Studies, 80 (1990); The scale could be immense. In one case that was admittedly even to Roman standards extravagant in ad 52 to mark the draining of Lake Fucinus 19,000 condemned men were forced to fight themselves to death in a mock sea battle. See also below, n. 54 with references. 37 Olivia F. Robinson, The Criminal Law of Ancient Rome (Baltimore, 1995) passim; Salerno, “Ad metalla,” 66f: e.g. Coll. 11.2.1 (cattle rustling), Coll. 13.3.2 (boundary stones), Pl., Ep. 10.58 (forgery); Dig. 37.14.1 (Ulpian): a freedman who raised a hand against his patron could be condemned to the mines (quod si manus intulit, in metallus dandus erit). 38 See Salerno, “Ad metalla,” 66–71, crimes include abortion, various forms of status usurpa tion and grave robbery. 39 The fourth case (col. 4. l.18 – col. 5 l.7) of b.g.u. 4.1024, a rather curious Egyptian codex from ce 360 that contains a series of cases brought before a hegemon (governor, possibly the prefect, or a lower official). It is not known to what extent the reports represent actual cases; the codex may also have been a kind of model book. See James G. Keenan, “Roman Criminal Law in a Berlin Papyrus Codex,” Archiv für Papyrusforschung, 35 (1989) for discussion. 40 Though note that normally the death penalty was given to Christians; cf. De Churruca, “Confesseurs Non Condamnés a Mort.”
41 Robinson, The Criminal Law, 26–35; Davies, “Condemnation to the Mines”; Gustafson, “Condemnation to the Mines.” 42 Dig. 48.19.8.9 (Ulpian), both for the principle and for the fact that it was sometimes vio lated. Millar, “Condemnation to Hard Labour,” 125–126, 131; Bernardo Santalucia, Studi di Diritto Penale Romano (Rome, 1994) 238; Salerno, “Ad metalla,” 31. Note that there are a few references to the use of stone quarries as a place of detention, see T.J. Cadoux, “The Roman ‘Carcer’ and Its Adjuncts,” Greece and Rome, 55 (2008), 203 for such use of the latumiae in the centre of Rome in the 2nd and 1st cent bce and, much earlier, in the 5th cent bce in Syracuse, as described by Thuc. 7.86.2; 7.87.1-4. 43 Millar, “Condemnation to Hard Labour,” 126, 130–132. For the city of Rome, see the over view of Cadoux, “The Roman ‘Carcer’.” 44 Pace Garnsey, Social Status and Legal Privilege, 147–149; P. Garnsey, “Why Penal Laws Became Harsher. The Roman Case,” Natural Law Forum, 13 (1968): 152: “imprisonment became a regular alternative to penalties such as exile, the fine, and public labor.” 45 Robinson, The Criminal Law, 6 for some early examples. 46 Coates (this volume); Coates, Convicts and Orphans, 41: “It would appear that the Crown came to view these degredados [convicts] not as criminals already sentenced by the courts, simply awaiting departure, but as a mobile royal labor force, whose ultimate des tination was yet to be determined. The timing and language selected in alvarãs strongly suggests this attitude. The Crown came to decree that criminal exiles awaiting transporta tion were to be applied to the pressing manpower needs of a specific colony” (his emphasis). 47 Pace Coates, quoted above. That is, unless we count Julius Caesar’s mock naval battle in 46 bc, acted out in an artificial lake where convicts and captives manned the ships that
men condemned to public labour for a time are to be condemned for life, men condemned for life are to be condemned to the mines, and men condemned to the mines are to be condemned to the highest penalty (i.e. execution).50
entered the arena, for which see Dio Cassius 43.23.5; Lionel Casson, “Galley Slaves,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, 97 (1966), 42–44. For the Spanish, see Ruth Pike, “Penal Servitude in the Spanish Empire: Presidio Labor in the Eighteenth Century,” The Hispanic American Historical Review, 58 (1978), 22, for the Portuguese Coates, Convicts and Orphans, Chapter two and passim. 48 E.g. Casson, “Galley Slaves,” 35–42 on the use of slave rowers; H. Mouritsen, The Freedman in the Roman World, (Cambridge 2011), 72 shows a reluctance even extended to the employment of freed slaves. 49 It is interesting to see that the Romans (or at least some of them) were not unaware of other possibilities to put convicts to work. In the Periplus Maris Erythraei, a Roman hand book dating probably to the middle of the first century that describes trade routes in the Indian Ocean, mention is made of Kane on the coast of Arabia where the frankincense that the area produces “is handled by royal slaves and convicts. For the districts are terri bly unhealthy, harmful to those sailing by and absolutely fatal to those working there – who, moreover, die off easily because of the lack of nourishment,” Periplus 29, ed., and trans. Lionel Casson, The Periplus Maris Erythraei, (Princeton nj, 1989). See also Periplus 59 for pearl diving carried out by convicts at Kolchoi, part of the Pandian kingdom in India. Such employments are not attested within the Roman empire. Cf. Pl., n.h. 33.70 for the notion that mining is even more dangerous than pearl-diving. 50 Dig. 28.13-14, translation Garnsey, Social Status and Legal Privilege, 103 n. 2: qui in tempus damnati erant, in perpetuum damnarentur, qui in perpetuum damnati erant, in metallum
For opus publicum, temporary sentences were probably the norm.51 Whether temporary or for life, the verdict entailed a loss of citizenship (if applicable) and property, though it appears that the convict retained his or her free status (again, if applicable).52 The jurists’ concern is mostly with a convict’s legal sta tus or measures against escapees, but it is not immediately apparent what “public work” entailed, or where such convict labour was employed. The problem is that in many of our sources that discuss the Grands Travaux of imperial times the references to the workforce are extremely vague. In many cases we expect convicts to be employed, but we cannot be sure. For example, in a famous poem of Statius about the building of the Via Domitiana, all we hear about the labourers is “o, how many hands are working together” – which may refer to gangs of convicts.53 In the case of the drainage of Lake Fucinus, we hear that a workforce of 30,000 was employed for eleven years, but its composi tion remains unknown. The fact that the work was divided over private con tractors does not completely rule out the possibility that they also employed convicts, but it certainly serves as a warning that large workforces do not auto matically imply convict labour.54 Similarly, Nero’s project to dig a canal through the Isthmus is a likely candidate for the employment of convict labour on a large scale, but one source reports that the project was initiated by the emperor himself, who urged his praetorian guard to follow his example, and at a later time we hear of captive enemies rather than convicts proper who were put to work.55
damnarentur, qui in metallum damnati id admiserint, summo supplicio adficerentur; Dig. 48.19.8,7 for a similar scaling of penalties. 51 Millar, “Condemnation to Hard Labour,” 135–136. E.g. Coll. 11.3.1 (1 year opus publicum for minor forms of cattle theft), Coll. 13.3.2 (2 or 3 years opus publicum for some forms of movement of boundary stones). 52 Garnsey, Social Status and Legal Privilege, 133. Slave and free, male and female could all be condemned to hard labour, see Millar, “Condemnation to Hard Labour,” 138; Gordian in cj 9, 47 11; Dig. 48.19.8. 53 Statius, Silvae 4.3.49: o quantae pariter manus laborant. 54 Suet., Claud. 20; sha Hadr. 22.12. In view of the subject of this chapter it is somewhat ironic that the lake is much better known as the place where by way of inauguration just before the water was let out a mock sea battle was staged in which the condemned greeted the emperor with the phrase “those who are going to die salute you,” see Suet., Claud. 21.6, cf. Tac., Ann. 12.56-57. 55 Suet., Nero 19 (emperor and praetorians); Jos. b.j. 3.540 (captives). In fact, the story about the convict labour of the philosopher Musonius Rufus in Philostratos, Life of Apollonios 5.18.2 (also mentioned above) is probably fictitious.
A letter from Pliny the Younger to the emperor Trajan may indicate that the construction of roads, working in bath-houses, and cleaning of sewers were likely options for opus publicum. Pliny, as governor of Bithynia, discovers that some of those working as public slaves in the province have actually been con demned to opus (“work”), to the games, or to “similar punishments,” and he asks the emperor what he should do about them.56 The emperor answers that the convicts should be restored to their various punishments, unless the persons involved have become elderly or weak and the verdict was given more than 10 years ago. In which case, he says,
let them be distributed to those tasks that are not far from a punishment. For men of that sort are generally put to (work in) a bath-house, the cleaning-out of drains, and also the building of roads and of streets (?).57
The interpretation of the passage is not indisputable, however, and there is little other evidence for this interpretation of convict work.58 Nevertheless, if the employments mentioned by the emperor were not considered as opus, they were at least considered a fitting alternative. We may be reassured in this understanding of opus publicum by the fact that probation gangs in Van Diemen’s Land were similarly assigned to road maintenance for the first stretch of their sentence, or that workgroups of convicted criminals were responsible for the construction of roads and upkeep of public utilities on Mauritius in the early nineteenth century.59
56 The nature of the opus is debated: publicum or metalli? Millar, “Condemnation to Hard Labour,” assumes the first. Adrian N. Sherwin-White, The Letters of Pliny: a Historical and Social Commentary (Oxford, 1966) argues in his commentary that the conviction appar ently is for life – and that it therefore concerns punishment to metallum. We consider both options viable. 57 Translation Millar, “Condemnation to Hard Labour,” 135 with modifications. Distribuamus illos in ea ministeria, quae non longe a poena sint. Solent enim eius modi ad balineum, ad purgationes cloacarum, item munitiones viarum et vicorum dari. For the text, see Mauritius Schuster, C. Plini Caecilii Secundi Epistularum Libri Novem: Epistularum ad Traianum Liber; Panegyricus (Leipzig, 1933). The manuscript tradition is problematical; alternatively read Solent et ad balineum etc. 58 Our thanks to Ruurd Nauta at Groningen University for help with the interpretation of this curious passage. Other evidence for condemnation to road building: Suet. Cal. 27.3. 59 David Meredith and Deborah Oxley, “Contracting Convicts: The Convict Labour Market in Van Diemen’s Land 1840–1857,” Australian Economic History Review, 45 (2005), 48; Clare Anderson, Convicts in the Indian Ocean: Transportation from South Asia to Mauritius, 1815–1853 (Basingstoke, 2000), 35. Examples may be multiplied.
The infamous and much harsher alternative to public works, as we have seen, was damnatio in metalla. Metalla was a term used to cover all kinds of mines and quarries.60 Contemporaries as well as later scholars have empha sized the brutal circumstances of those condemned ad metalla: “Metallum comes next after death in severity.”61 It took away liberty, property and inheri tance rights.62 The convict became a “slave of the penalty” (servus poenae). If initially there was a difference between the various terms applied for con demnation to the mines, it seems to have been of minor importance and it disappeared relatively soon: the alternative of opus metalli – unlike metallum – perhaps did retain freedom until the late 2nd century; the so-called ministe- rium metallicorum may have initially been a lighter post reserved for women, but is later attested for men also.63 A sentence to the metalla could be a life sentence.64 Repeal was possible, but probably occurred rarely.65 A sentence could also be imposed for a fixed period. Some papyri from Egypt document releases because the condemned had completed their terms (in two cases five years in the alabaster quarries). They also give a glimpse of the elaborate administrative processes involved, implying that release was not automatic but needed formal approval. First the prefect of Egypt (the governor, who resided in Alexandria) had to order the release in a letter to the personnel of the quarry.66 Then the district administra tor would be notified through an official document drawn up by the prefect’s
60 Salerno, “Ad metalla,” 26–28; note that the Romans were perfectly capable of distinguish ing linguistically between the two, and had several other words to denote specific types of mines and quarries. 61 Proxima morti poena metalli coercitio, Dig. 48, 19,28, 1 (Callistratus); Davies, “Condemnation to the Mines,” 102–107; Garnsey, Social Status and Legal Privilege, 132; Lassandro, “I ‘dam nati in metalla’,” passim; Salerno, “Ad metalla,” 64. 62 Garnsey, Social Status and Legal Privilege, 132–133, with reference to Dig. 48.19.8.6 (Ulpian). 63 Millar, “Condemnation to Hard Labour,” 139; Garnsey, Social Status and Legal Privilege, 132; Mrozek, “Zur Frage,” 343. 64 Though note that according to the jurist Herennius Modestinus (3rd c.) an indefinite sen tence to the mines should be read to mean 10 years: Dig. 47,19,23. 65 Cf. Pl., Ep. 10.58 where a person condemned for forgery is sentenced to the mines, appar ently escapes, and subsequently is unable to cite proof that his sentence had been reversed. The edict of toleration of 313 ce resulted in the release of Christians from the mines, see Eusebius he 8.17.3-11 for a summary discussion of the edict, and he 9.1.7 for the subsequent release of the Christians from the mines. 66 s.b. 20.14631. In this extremely fragmentary Latin text the prefect releases a man named Petesouchos son of Petesouchos from the alabaster quarries because he had completed his 5-year term.
67 s.b. 1.4639 (ce 209) is the notification by the prefect of Egypt to a district governor that he had released a man called Nigeras son of Papirius from the alabaster quarries because he has completed the term of 5 years to which he was condemned by the prefect’s prede cessor. Incidentally this document is the original from the prefect’s office (rather than a copy), with the main body written in the highly official chancery’s style, followed by the prefect’s signature, and countersigned by a lower official from the prefect’s office. 68 In s.b. 14.11999 (ce 210) the district administrator passes on the copy of a letter of a pre fect of an order for local officials to release a man named Isidoros-Chaireas because the condemned had completed his time. It is not stated for how long, or where, he had served. 69 Although markings are often mentioned, we should not expect complete uniformity of practice. The efforts taken by Cicero in the Verres-episode discussed above (Cicero, In Verrem 2.5.158-169) to prove that Gavius was indeed working in the quarries suggest he lacked any physical marks to identify him as such: Cicero refers instead to the administra tive records of the quarries and witnesses who have seen him there. Likewise in Pl., Ep. 10.58 the escaped convict is only caught when he is denounced – apparently he is not recognisable as such. 70 E.g. Coll. 13.3.1. 71 Eg. Philostratos, V. App. 5.19.2 in which Musonius Rufus is “bound”(“and forced to dig”) presumably in leg-irons. 72 Petr., Sat. 103.1-5. 73 E.g. Suet. Cal. 27.3. Charles P. Jones, “Stigma: Tattooing and Branding in Graeco-Roman Antiquity,” Journal of Roman Studies, 77 (1987); Mark Gustafson, “Inscripta in Fronte: Penal Tattooing in Late Antiquity,” Classical Antiquity, 16 (1997). For patches used to hide tattoos, see Martial 2.29, joking about someone posing as senator: “Don’t you know what he is? Remove the patches: you will read,” ignoras quid sit? splenia tolle, leges. 74 Millar, “Condemnation to Hard Labour,” 126; Webster, “Routes to Slavery in the Roman World,” 54. For slave punishments, the best description is Apul., Met. 9.12, also mentioned above. For the almost automatic equation between having a shaved head and being sub jected to whippings, see Juv., Sat. 5.171-173.
Given the uneven distribution of our sources it is impossible to estimate the frequency with which people were condemned to convict labour, and the same applies to the question whether the cruelty of penalties increased over time.75 Harsh penalties as such certainly receive more explicit mention in Late Antiquity. Partly this is the result of a change in the nature of our sources: hun dreds of imperial rulings are preserved in the late antique codices, and among them we find many examples of extremely cruel punishments. Their appear ance has also been read as a sign of imperial impotence: faced with the disin tegration of their empires, emperors started to impose ever stronger but ever less effective measures. The development has been positively interpreted as a consequence of a more engaged imperial ideology,76 which may be a reflection of a more engaged practice as well. One could argue for a steady upward “curve of penal development” in the use of capital punishment, which became more common, more widely applicable and ever more creative throughout the later empire. It is therefore possible that condemnation to convict labour also became more widely imposed, but whether this is the case remains unclear.77
The Limits of Governmentality
In the introductory chapter to this volume, De Vito and Lichtenstein empha size the importance of forced transportation. Four factors govern the develop ment of such transportation: centralized authority, control over large territories with uneven distribution of resources, a drive for colonization, and fluidity between free and unfree labour. It is worth elaborating on the particulars of the Roman situation. Forced transportation under the Roman empire had little or nothing to do with colonization or military expansion – Roman colonists were often veter ans, or Roman citizens in any case. Forced transportation may simply have
75 Robinson, The Criminal Law, 13, with n. 180 for reference to examples in the Codex Theodosianus; Garnsey’s 1968 paper has a telling title, “Why penal laws became harsher,” and includes all punishments in his narrative of progressively harsher punishment. 76 Judith Evans Grubbs, Women and the Law in the Roman Empire: A Sourcebook on Marriage, Divorce and Widowhood (London etc., 2002), 5: “but these often-horrific penalties also serve as propaganda, setting forth the ideals of the ruler, and we should not assume that such penalties were always carried out.” 77 See MacMullen, “Judicial Savagery,” 148 for brief discussion: “…condemnation to such work-places, though it is more often talked about as the records of the Christian persecu tions multiply, does not seem to have changed character across the whole history of the empire.”
78 Coates, “European Forced Labour,” 633: “specific unhealthy or unfavorable regions of a given empire became closely identified with forced labor because these locales consis tently failed to attract sufficient free immigration.” Coates deals with the two examples of Louisiana and São Tomé on pages 633–634. But cf n. 49 above. 79 Sarah T. Cohen, “Augustus, Julia and the Development of Exile ad Insulam,” The Classical Quarterly, 58 (2006), 217 writes: “the identification of islands with exile became fixed.” The luxury in which the banished aristocrats continued to live was already commented upon in antiquity, see e.g. Juv. Sat. 1.48-50: “what is infamia if the money is safe?” Sen., ad Helv. 12.4 states that in his time exiles owned more wealth than leading senators had inherited under the Republic. 80 Dio Cassius 56.27.3 with Fred K. Drogula, “Controlling Travel: Deportation, Islands and the Regulation of Senatorial Mobility in the Augustan Principate,” The Classical Quarterly, 61 (2011), 238 for further discussion and examples. Both Cohen, “Augustus” and Drogula, “Controlling Travel” discuss the development in the early empire of a two-tiered system of relegatio (temporal removal from Italy) and deportatio ad insulam (permanent exile to an island). 81 Sherman, “Tensions of Colonial Punishment,” for the concept of coercive networks. It includes state law towards Roman citizens and towards others, but also provincial law, Roman law in the provinces, and private punishment.
The Roman state lacked an efficient police force at every level, Imperial, provincial, and local. As the Imperial “police” forces throughout our period were only rudimentary, the responsibility for putting down crime must have devolved largely on the provincial governors.82
The efforts and efficiency of individual governors in fighting crime may have varied widely. Pliny the Younger obviously wants his audience to infer from his words that he, as governor of Bithynia, takes such matters extremely seriously. His letter X. 31 cited above would seem to indicate that, at least in Nicomedia and Nicea, some convicts had previously escaped the system83 and had been working as public slaves instead, and were apparently remunerated for their labour. Millar rightly points out that in Pliny’s account “all the various categories of condemned had remained within the context of the cities, and that some had been condemned specifically in opus.”84 It appears that opus publicum was often filled in locally, in the cities, and not necessarily on public works of the state.85 Local employment and integration of convicts sounds very different from early modern regimes where convicts were deliberately sent away to remove negative influences on “honest citizens”: under those circum stances there were few alternatives to forced transportation as a penalty, and a convicted criminal would be sent to a colony or, if he were lucky, to a mine or quarry within the homeland.86 Forced transportation within the Roman empire could be organized on the level of the state as well as that of the province. Suetonius mentions the fact that Nero spent lavishly on elaborate building projects, including a 160 mile canal from Lake Avernus to Ostia,
82 Garnsey, “Why Penal Laws Became Harsher,” 157; Wilfried Nippel, Public Order in Ancient Rome (Cambridge, 1995). 83 For another escape, see Cicero, In Verrem 2.5.158-169, discussed above. 84 Millar, “Condemnation to Hard Labour,” 135. 85 Millar, “Condemnation to Hard Labour,” 133–135: Likewise, damnati ad bestias would enter a local arena, and were only on rare occasions shipped to Rome. Millar’s argument is underlined by the semantic value of the word publicus, which, in the imperial period, can refer to anything belonging “to the cities.” 86 Stephen Nicholas, Convict Workers: Reinterpreting Australia’s Past (Cambridge, 1988), introduction; Coates, Convicts and Orphans; admittedly, Coates also demonstrates that convicted criminals who had to wait too long for a ship might be employed in public works locally – but only until their ship arrived.
The mines are many in number and some provinces have them and oth ers do not: but those which do not have mines send (convicts) to those provinces which have.88
Ulpian indicates that there were numerous mines, unevenly distributed over the empire – though modern scholars have indicated that provinces com pletely devoid of metalla were probably rare. If there were countless mines, and if those mines were staffed by convict labour, transportation over both short and longer distances must have been vast. Convicts were not always put to work locally; they could be sent further away if the crime was deemed more severe.89 Mines and quarries (metalla) as a rule were exploited on behalf of the state, either directly or indirectly.90 Imperial mines or quarries could be leased out to
87 Suet. Nero 31.3: Quorum operum perficiendorum gratia quod ubique esset custodiae in Italiam deportari, etiam scelere convictos non nisi ad opus damnari praeceperat. 88 Dig. 48. 19.8.4 (Ulpian): metalla autem multa numero sunt et quaedam quidem provinciae habent, quaedam non habent: sed quae non habent, in eas provincias mittunt, quae metalla habent. The uneven distribution is also implied in the notion that some provinces were exceptionally rich in ore, see e.g. Strabo 3.2.8-10 on the Iberian peninsula, or that mines in some regions were outcompeted by mines in others, e.g. Strabo 5.1.12. 89 Salerno, “Ad metalla,” 30 cites Eus. mp. 8.13 and Athan., Hist.Arian. 59.3 for damnati sent outside their own province, despite the fact that there were metalla. C.Th. 14.24.1 (Constantine 328 ce) suggests that being sent further away was considered an additional punishment. Compare Anderson (this volume) for retransportation as additional punish ment for convicts in the Indian ocean. 90 Davies, “Condemnation to the Mines,” 104; Millar, “Condemnation to Hard Labour,” 142.
91 Alfred M. Hirt, Imperial Mines and Quarries in the Roman World: Organizational Aspects, 27 bc–ad 235 (Oxford, 2010), Chapter 7, 261–331. 92 The contracts between the state and private entrepreneurs for the hiring out of convict labourers in Australia are perhaps the clearest example: Meredith and Oxley, “Contracting Convicts,”; see also e.g. Anderson, Convicts in the Indian Ocean, 54, and Coates (this volume). 93 Millar, “Condemnation to Hard Labour,” 141–142. It is in the nature of the Dacian evidence (labour contracts) that free labour predominates. 94 Eus. mp. 7. 1–4; 8,1; 13.1; 13.4-10. Cf Eus. he 8.13.5. References are to the shorter, Greek ver sion of On the Martyrs in Palestine. See for the tradition of the text e.g. Andreas Bigelmair, “Des Eusebius Pamphili Schrift über die Märtyrer in Palästina,” in Des Eusebius von Cäsarea ausgewählte Schriften aus dem Griechischen übersetzt, Bd 1, Andreas Bigelmair and Johann M. Pfättisch (Kempten etc., 1913), 111.
95 Mattingly et al., “A Landscape of Imperial Power,” 326–327, with fig. 10.26; George Findlater et al., “The Wadi Faynan Project: The South Cemetery Excavation, Jordan 1996: A Preliminary Report,” Levant, 30 (1998). 96 Megan A. Perry et al., “An Isotopic Perspective on the Transport of Byzantine Mining Camp Laborers into Southwestern Jordan,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 140, 3 (2009). 97 Megan A. Perry et al., “Condemned to Metallum? The Origin and Role of 4th–6th Century ce Phaeno Mining Camp Residents Using Multiple Chemical Techniques,” Journal of Archaeological Science, 38.3 (2011); but note on p. 567: “Activities with high exposure could include not only mining and smelting activities but anything that would bring them to areas of the site with high heavy metals in the soil, such as farming.” 98 Pl., n.h. 33.97 with Andreau, “Recherches récentes II,” 90 on Acquitani working at the other side of the Pyrenees; for workers from the Nile Valley at Mons Claudianus, see below.
The answer should probably be sought in the existence of a mixed labour force including specialist as well as servile hands, all of whom could be locals as well as migrants.99 The archaeological evidence from Phaeno seems to cor roborate an integrated labour force. Thus the narrow entrances to the mines that have been uncovered in some places were easy to guard, but more spa cious entrances elsewhere less so; the presence of soldiers in the vicinity is known, and they could have provided supervision for a convict labour force. However, the evidence also suggests that the soldiers were not many and there fore it is likely that part of the labour force was made up of voluntary work ers.100 The ambiguous evidence from the mines – the copper and gold mines of Phaeno may serve merely as a case in point – should not come as a surprise, considering the integration of convict labour in the overall labour market and its presumed marginality, both of which will be discussed extensively below.
The Labour Market: Convict Labour in Interaction with Other Forms of Labour
There was an extremely wide range of mines and quarries in operation in the Roman period;101 likewise the scale of public building in the Roman world was vast. Although Roman historians may have somewhat underestimated the use of mechanical equipment such as lifting devices, it is clear that all projects necessitated large amounts of menial labour. This is corroborated by the stray figures reported in the ancient sources. In the case of the mines, 40,000 men were reportedly employed in the mines of Cartagena in Spain. This is so vast a figure that modern scholars believe it may have included the population of the surrounding district.102 Less spectacular figures still refer to hundreds or thou sands of workers.103 There can also be no doubt about the extreme physical
99 See e.g. Mattingly et al., “A Landscape of Imperial Power,” 333–334; David Mattingly, “Comparative Advantages. Roman Slavery and Imperialism,” Archaeological Dialogues, 15 (2008), 138. 100 Mattingly et al., “A Landscape of Imperial Power,” 309, 312, 333–334; Mattingly, Imperialism, power, and identity, 188–190. 101 For a good general introduction to the Roman mines see A. Woods, “Mining,” in John Wacher, ed., The Roman World, vol. II, (London and New York, 1987). 102 Polyb. 34.9.8 apud Strabo 3.2.10; Andreau, “Recherches Récentes,” 94 and idem, “Recherches Récentes II,” 92 for some discussion, also of other figures. 103 Strabo 12.3.40 for no less than 200 miners in a sulphur mine in Bithynia; Pl., n.h. 33.78 for an old prohibition to employ more than 5,000 in the mines of Victumulae in Italy. See also the figures quoted in Section 2 for numbers of Christians condemned to work in Phaeno.
104 Cf Tac., Ann. 11.20.3 for what seems to be soldiers’ humour: when an army is employed by its ambitious new general to open a silver mine the soldiers write in private to the emperor suggesting that they prefer it that generals obtain triumphal honours before they are assigned an army. Of course such honours could only be obtained in military activities. Part of the joke lies in the implication that working in the mines is more arduous than fighting. For a different formulation of the extreme dangers involved in working the mines, see Pl., n.h. 33.70: diving for pearls and purple fishes is comparatively light toil. 105 Pl., n.h. 33.71, cf. 33.97. Above the ground, and for further transport, animals might be used; see e.g. P.Char. 20 l.12 for an onos metallikos, a donkey employed in an Egyptian quarry. 106 Pl., n.h. 33.70. 107 E.g. Statius, Thebaid 6.880. 108 E.g. Vitr. 8.6.12-13; Lucr. 6.806-815. 109 Strabo 12.3.40 (Mt. Saudaracurgium in Asia Minor). Cf. also Diod.Sic. 5.36-38. 110 E.g. Andreau, “Recherches Récentes II” for the general idea; Mattingly et al., “A Landscape of Imperial Power,” for Phaeno; David P.S. Peacock and Valerie A. Maxfield, Mons Claudianus: Survey and Excavation 1987–1993 (Cairo, 1997), Valerie A. Maxfield and David P.S. Peacock, Mons Claudianus: Survey and Excavation 1987–1993 (Cairo, 2001), Valerie A. Maxfield et al., Mons Claudianus: Survey and Excavation 1987–1993 (Cairo, 2006) for Mons Claudianus – and see below. Note that even in the famous description of the Ptolemaic gold mines of Diod.Sic. 3.12-14 convicts work together with (presumably) free skilled workers. Women occur for example in Strabo 3.2.9 (Lusitania). 111 Tac., Ann. 11.20.3 for a case. Andreau, “Recherches Récentes,” 107 argues that with one pos sible exception in Britain in such cases troops would be used for opening the mines rather
than as regular workforce. For similar projects to keep soldiers employed in peacetime, see Tac., Ann. 13.53.2-4. 112 Jos. b.j. 3.540. 113 Florus, Epitome 2.25 for a case where subjection leads to forced work in the mine. See also the speech that Tacitus (Agr. 32.4) puts in the mouth of the Caledonian leader Calgacus on the eve of the Battle of Mons Graupius of ce 83 or 84: subjection to Roman rule means “tribute, working in the mines, and all the other pangs of slavery,” tributa et metalla et ceterae servientium poenae. Cf. in the same speech 31.1 for forced labour on roads through marshes and forests. 114 Peter Temin, “The Labor Market of the Early Roman Empire,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 34 (2004). An argument along the same lines was put forward by Keith R. Bradley, Slavery and Society at Rome (Cambridge, 1994), Chapter 4. 115 See e.g. the analysis of occupational inscriptions from Rome by Sandra R. Joshel, Work, Identity and Legal Status at Rome: A Study of the Occupational Inscriptions (Norman etc., 1992). 116 Cameron Hawkins, “Work in the City: Roman Artisans and the Urban Economy,” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2006): 204; Dig. 33.7.19.1; 36.1.80.12; 32.73.3. 117 Gai Inst. 2.95; A. Kirschenbaum, Sons, Slaves and Freedmen in Roman Commerce (Washington and Jerusalem, 1987).
118 Jean-Jacques Aubert, Business Managers in Ancient Rome: A Social and Economic Study of Institores, 200 bc – ad 250 (Leiden and New York, 1994), 9 ff. 119 Temin, “The Labor Market,” 538; see e.g. Diocletian’s famous price edict of 301 ce: Marta Giacchero, Edictum Diocletiani de Pretiis. Edictum Diocletiani et Collegarum de Pretiis Rerum Venalium. In Integrum Fere Restitutum e Latinis Graecisque Fragmentis Edidit Marta Giacchero (Genova, 1974), Edmond Frézouls, “Salaires, Prix et Niveaux de Vie: Quelques Enseignements de l’Édit du Maximum,” Ktema, 2 (1977) and idem, “Prix, Salaires et Niveaux de Vie: Quelques Enseignements de l’Édit du Maximum II,” Ktema, 3 (1978); Robert C. Allen, “How Prosperous Were the Romans? Evidence from Diocletian’s Price Edict (ad 301)” in Alan K. Bowman, ed., Quantifying the Roman Economy: Methods and Problems (Oxford, 2009); Dominic Rathbone, “Earnings and Costs: Living Standards and the Roman Economy (First to Third Centuries ad),” in Bowman, Quantifying the Roman Economy. 120 Laurens E. Tacoma, “The Labour Market,” in A. Claridge and C. Holleran, eds., A Companion to the City of Rome, (Oxford, forthcoming). 121 On the labour participation of women see Miriam J. Groen-Vallinga, “Desperate Housewives? The Adaptive Family Economy and Female Participation in the Roman Urban Labour Market” in E.A. Hemelrijk and G. Woolf, eds., Women and the Roman City in the Latin West, (Leiden and Boston, 2013). 122 Anderson, Convicts in the Indian Ocean, 43. 123 It was certainly the case in the Ptolemaic gold mines of Egypt described by Diod.Sic. 3.12-14.
124 Mattingly et. al., “A Landscape of Imperial Power,” 334. 125 David P.S. Peacock, “The Passio Sanctorum Quattor Coronatorum. A Petrological Approach,” Antiquity, 69 (1995), 366. 126 O. Claud.; up till now 4 vols have been published. The ostraca also include personal correspondence. 127 H. Cuvigny, “The Amount of Wages Paid to the Quarry-Workers at Mons Claudianus,” The Journal of Roman Studies, 86 (1996), 139; more extensively in J. Bingen and H. Cuvigny, eds., Mons Claudianus: Ostraca Graeca et Latina. 3: Reçus Pour Avances à La Familia: O. Claud. 417 à 631 (Cairo, 2000), 11–51. 128 These lists are collected in A. Bülow-Jacobsen, ed., Mons Claudianus: Ostraca Graeca et Latina. IV: The Quarry-Texts: O. Claud. 632–896 (Cairo, 2009); for the personnel of Mons Claudianus, see also H. Cuvigny, “L’Organigramme du Personnel d’une Carrière Imperial d’Après un Ostracon du Mons Claudianus,” Chiron, 35 (2005). 129 Héléne Cuvigny, “La Mort et la Maladie,” in J. Bingen ed., Mons Claudianus: Ostraca Graeca et Latina. I: O. Claud. 1 à 190 (Cairo, 1992); Héléne Cuvigny, “La Mort et la Maladie” in Jean Bingen and Héléne Cuvigny, eds., Mons Claudianus: Ostraca Graeca et Latina. 3: Reçus Pour Avances à La Familia: O. Claud. 417 à 631 (Cairo, 2000).
“family-members” appear to be free men, despite the servile connotations of the term familia.130 Never once are convicts explicitly mentioned.131 The pay-scale of the workers of Mons Claudianus is fairly well-known, rang ing from 28 to 47 drachmae a month. Requests sent to the quartermaster by pagani who wanted to procure goods (entolae) and receipts for advances of pay for familia indicate that both groups were paid in money and in kind.132 Archaeobotanical research demonstrates that the labourers had access to “a healthy and balanced diet” including “both staple foods and luxuries”; “the site was concerned with much more than basic survival and human nutrition” – an argument that reinforces the existence of an independent and free labour force.133 The ostraca attest to a small military presence at Mons Claudianus, which leaves open the possibility for supervision of convicted criminal labourers. But a convict presence is questioned by Bülow-Jacobsen in the introduction to O. Claud. IV:
Even the important question of the possible employment of slaves/prisoners is only answered e silentio: we know that there were free, paid workers, but we do not know that there were no prisoners, just that they are not mentioned in the texts that have come down to us. However, in such a flourishing bureaucracy, I think that the silence is significant. Seeing how everything else was counted and accounted for, I find it well nigh incon ceivable that we should not have found accounts of prisoners, had there been any.134
It is not entirely clear, however, whether the lists include unskilled menial workers that must have been present at a site like this, and perhaps that group
130 The term familia is often employed to refer to the slaves of a household and therefore has distinctly servile connotations. In this instance such connotations are underlined if – as Cuvigny would have it – the familia at Mons Claudianus should be interpreted as a familia Caesaris (imperial household), see Cuvigny, “La Mort [2000],” 24–26; however, only once is a doulos, slave, classified as such. Names and wages seem to indicate free status, though the texts do not record specific status-indications. That a familia Caesaris could be active in the metalla is supported by cil 13. 1550. 131 Cuvigny, “La Mort [2000],” 35–36. 132 Cuvigny, “The Amount of Wages.” 133 Marijke van der Veen, “The Food and Fodder Supply to Roman Quarry Settlements in the Eastern Desert of Egypt,” in M. van der Veen, ed., The Exploitation of Plant Resources in Ancient Africa (New York, 1999), 181; see also Marijke van der Veen, “A Life of Luxury in the Desert? The Food and Fodder Supply to Mons Claudianus,” Journal of Roman Archaeology, 11 (1998). 134 Bülow-Jacobsen, Mons Claudianus IV, 2.
Conclusions
A global history of convict labour cannot be written without taking account of the Roman empire. Roman law and Roman penal practices provide important insights into the history of penal law for many modern western nations, and cultural similarities can be found for both the east and west. The story of Roman convict labour adds to a larger picture of continuity and discontinuity that will sharpen studies of individual cases of convict labour. Convict labour in the Roman empire seems to have been already estab lished as a punishment during the Republic, though not for Roman citizens. Condemnation to hard labour was known in the provinces early on, as a rela tively mild alternative to capital sentences such as crucifixion or condemna tion to the arena. It became entrenched in Roman law under the early Principate when trials before an official became a regular occurrence and legal privileges were determined by class rather than legal status. Status distinctions determined a sentence and corporeal punishments became the dubious pre rogative of the lower classes. Convicts were employed in construction works, or in mines and quarries, so a measure of forced transportation may be presumed. The scale of such forced transportation cannot have been very substantial, however. Forced transporta tion was generally organized on a local level for opus publicum. In the case of opus metalli we find convicts being sent on the road for significant distances, and they could be shifted around from one place to another. However, a certain
135 Peacock and Maxfield, Mons Claudianus, 200; see also Cuvigny, “La Mort [2000],” 35–36: the convicts may have “drowned in the anonymity of the lists,” “peut-être sont-ils noyés dans l’anonymat de la familia.” For administrative lists that certainly included convicts, see Cicero, In Verrem 2.5.158-169. 136 So, somewhat overconfidently, Ael.Arist., Or. 36.67: “just as other quarries it is worked by convicts.”
Alice Rio
Penal enslavement in the early middle ages is a surprisingly neglected topic. It is often mentioned in passing in studies dealing with slavery during this period, but rarely in more than a paragraph noting its existence. Yet it was a very last- ing and ubiquitous practice: examples of it can be found throughout the early middle ages, and even later, in virtually every region of Europe. It had also existed in the Roman world, but one should be wary of taking this as a sign of direct continuity. It was a general European phenomenon, including in areas which had never been part of the Roman empire, such as Ireland and Scandinavia. Even in ex-Roman provinces, it operated with a different logic, and fulfilled different functions in the early middle ages from those it had under Rome. It applied in cases where someone proved unable to pay the com- pensation owed to someone they had wronged, in effect blurring the line with debt slavery. Compensation payments and servitude were interchangeable alternatives, as opposed to the late Roman situation, where each was formally mandated for different social ranks.2 Unlike under Rome, it was no longer intrinsically attached to legal solutions achieved through state involvement, nor did it imply any particular kind of work as its outcome, such as work in the mines or participation in public works. Whereas Roman law had maintained a conceptual distinction between slaves and convicts, early medieval penal servitude was framed in fundamentally the same terms as other forms of unfreedom. It was not just “like” slavery as a result of dehumanisation or violent treatment: it was slavery in a very explicit sense – even if, as we shall see, it
1 I am extremely grateful to Alice Taylor for letting me try out chunks of this chapter on her as it was being written, and for discussing it with me; I also give very warm thanks to David Carpenter, Thomas Charles-Edwards, Wendy Davies, Paul Fouracre, Jinty Nelson and Chris Wickham for commenting on drafts, and to Graham Barrett, Daniel Hadas and Jon Jarrett for pointing me to cases I didn’t know about. This chapter was written during research leave obtained thanks to a Philip Leverhulme Prize. 2 On Roman penal servitude, see Fergus Millar, “Condemnation to Hard Labour in the Roman Empire, from the Julio-Claudians to Constantine,” Papers of the British School at Rome, 52 (1984), 124–147, and now the chapter by Groen-Vallinga and Tacoma in this volume. The Visigothic laws are the only post-Roman laws to assign different penalties to humiliores and honestiores, but there is no evidence for actual use of these particular qualifications in the early medieval era.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004285026_004
3 I use the word here to denote unfree legal status; that is not to say medieval varieties of “slav- ery” were not often very removed from what we might think of as slavery in practical terms. 4 Contra Pierre Bonnassie, “The Survival and Extinction of the Slave System in the Early Medieval West (fourth to eleventh centuries),” in Pierre Bonnassie, ed. From Slavery to Feudalism in South-Western Europe, tr. Jean Birrell (Cambridge, 1991), 1–59: 36. 5 See Alice Rio, “Self-sale and Voluntary Entry into Unfreedom, 300–1100,” Journal of Social History, 45:3 (2012), 661–685.
Compensation and Penal Enslavement
Although details differed geographically, all regions of early medieval Europe shared some important basic traits in their approach to punishment and the process of dispute settlement, insofar as all, to a greater or lesser extent, had very weak structures of enforcement, and faced similar practical challenges. One of these shared traits is the practice of private vengeance or self-help, enlisting the support of friends and family members (I will call this “feud” for short, though some historians prefer to give feud a narrower definition6). Another is the finely graded system of compensations payable by someone convicted of committing a wrong. The two were profoundly interlinked, and relied to an equally considerable extent on the two most crucial kinds of social grouping available in early medieval Europe: kin and local community. Neither of these, however, should be understood as institutions, nor even as being par- ticularly organised or coherent. “Family” usually involved a small group, though a more extended kin network could sometimes be summoned into existence on particular occasions and for particular purposes. At the outer edges of the widening circles of family relationship, feelings of responsibility and support could be very loose indeed, and solidarity within them was far from an automatic given. Similarly, a “local community” was never a homogeneous whole; throughout this Chapter I will use it as shorthand for the collection of varied interest groups, neighbours, friends and enemies who made up such
6 Guy Halsall, “Reflections on Early Medieval Violence: The Example of the ‘Blood Feud’,” Memoria y Civilización, 2 (1999), 7–29.
7 Liudprand 13, ed. Friedrich Bluhme, Leges Langobardorum, mgh Leges (Hanover, 1868).
8 Pactus Legis Salicae 58, ed. Karl A. Eckhardt, mgh Leges i, 4, 1 (Hanover, 1962); Patrick Wormald, The Making of English Law (Oxford, 1999), 47. The expectation of family partici- pation is also clear from Chilperic’s edict, which orders the man who cannot pay and whose family is unwilling to help to be handed over to the victim: Capitularia regum Francorum, ed. Alfred Boretius (Hanover, 1883–1890), vol. i, no. 4, c. 8. 9 Stefan Esders, “Wergeld und soziale Netzwerke im Frankenreich,” in Steffen Patzold and Karl Ubl, eds., Verwandtschaft, Name und soziale Ordnung (300–1100) (Berlin, 2014), 141–160; ed. Hansmartin Schwarzmeier, “Ein Reichenauer Schuldregister des 9. Jahrhunderts. Ein Beitrag zum Überlieferungsproblem der Reichenau,” in Helmut Maurer, ed., Die Abtei Reichenau: Neue Beiträge zur Geschichte und Kultur des Inselklosters (Sigmarigen, 1974), 17–30, at 20. On sureties, see Wendy Davies, “Suretyship in the Cartulaire de Redon,” in Thomas Charles-Edwards, Morfydd E. Owen and Douglas B. Walters, eds., Lawyers and Laymen (Cardiff, 1986), 72–91. Such networks of support were also expected to keep the person they were supporting to account. The institution of frankpledge, which created groups of people and made them account for the actions of its members, unique to late Anglo-Saxon England, could be seen as a more formalised, and more compulsory, way of dealing with the same concern, in such a way as to leave no one outside some form of local group responsibility; but group solidarity did not automatically follow, since the group were expected to seek out and hand over a culprit rather than necessarily to help them (on frank- pledge see Patrick Wormald, Legal Culture in the Early Medieval West (Oxford, 1999), 54–56). 10 William i. Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland (Chicago, 1990), 276, 278.
Chramnesind in late sixth-century Touraine, narrated by Gregory of Tours.11 The conflict started at a Christmas party where everyone had such a good time that a servant ended up dead; things went downhill from there and resulted in a succession of retaliatory acts, including murder, appropriation of goods and arson. Gregory himself tried to broker a settlement, and offered church funds to help it along. Although this first attempt at settlement failed, church funds remained part of the deal when the dispute was finally settled by judges (judi- ces). Sichar’s payment was also discounted to compensate for Chramnesind’s own actions. Although compensation payments were unaffordable for the vast majority of people who might have to make them, there were thus many layers of safety nets in place. The ability to pay rested on the same conditions as the ability to pursue self-help successfully: kin and community networks of support. Unaffordability, far from diminishing the effectiveness of compensation payments, was very likely their whole point. It was meant to ensure that no single individual could ever pay them on their own, and to avoid anyone getting the bright idea that they could independently and unilaterally decide to engage in disruptive and wrongful behaviour, simply on the basis that they could afford to pay: hardly anyone could, and even those who could certainly could not do it easily. This would have been enough to create an enormous incentive to get on well with one’s family and with at least a substantial number of (preferably elite) local inhabitants. The burden of having to muster interested parties to participate in compensation payments was aimed at creating a real social as well as economic cost for the culprit, who would have had to call in many favours. It was also about spreading responsibility beyond the individual to the collective level – which also implied a greater urgency for internal policing within the support group of its more rash members: a network of support, however helpful it might be in isolated instances, could not, and would not, keep paying compensation on a repeat basis without bankrupting itself. It is worth stressing that such local support does not imply local consensus. One needed only to demonstrate that one had enough support that failure to settle in an acceptable way would lead to very unpleasant consequences for the community. Æthelstan expressed
11 Gregory of Tours, Histories vii, 47, ed. Bruno Krusch, mgh Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum i, 1, at 367–368; the end of the story is told at ix, 19. See inter alia J. Michael Wallace- Hadrill, “The Bloodfeud of the Franks,” in J. Michael Wallace-Hadrill, The Long-Haired Kings (London, 1962), 121–147; Halsall, “Violence”; Philippe Depreux, “Une faide exem- plaire? À propos des aventures de Sichaire: vengeance et pacification aux temps mérovingiens,” in Dominique Barthélemy, François Bougard and Régine Le Jan, eds., La vengeance, 400–1200 (Rome, 2006), 65–85.
12 iv Æthelstan 3, ed. and tr. Frederick L. Attenborough, The Laws of the Earliest English Kings (Cambridge, 1922). 13 Fortunatus, Carmina v, 14, ed. Friedrich Leo, mgh Auctores antiquissimi iv, 1 (Berlin, 1881).
14 Outlawry seems to have fulfilled a similar function (for Iceland: Miller, Bloodtaking, 238– 239; on penal servitude in Scandinavia: Ruth Mazo Karras, Slavery and Society in Medieval Scandinavia (New Haven, ma, 1988), 52–55).
Penal enslavement was therefore a necessary corollary of the structure of punishment during this period, and of the crucial role played by kin and com- munity in the keeping of order. It was implied within that structure, much as the ordeal, typically undergone when the accused was of low status or an out- sider to the community, was the flipside of oath-helping.15 The crucial advan- tage of this practice was that it offered third parties means of reaching a definitive settlement to the dispute even when they could not, or did not choose to, get involved as far as to offer compensation. Even failure to get a compensation payment together, however, did not mean total failure, or lack of room for negotiation. Penal enslavement, although (like death) certainly at the bottom of the scale of desirability as legal out- comes went, was (unlike death) an adaptable solution: it could happen, or be prevented, on many different terms, and at different stages of the process, leav- ing room for many possible deals between all parties. It is therefore important to consider not only those cases which eventually ended in penal enslavement for the offender, but also those which might have led to it, but did not, because the parties involved managed to cut a deal.
The Sequence of Options
If an offender did fall through all the holes in the various available safety nets (that is, if they could not find oath-helpers or witnesses to clear them; if they could not negotiate an alternative settlement or a discount of their compensa- tion payment with their adversaries; and if, having lost the case, they also failed to secure help from kin, guarantors or local authorities, and the outcome of the case was pronounced to be penal enslavement), even then the matter did not necessarily end there: many different ways of handling the situation still remained. The condemned could offer their property at this late stage, even if it did not amount to the full value demanded, in a bid to dissuade plaintiffs from enact- ing the full strength of their entitlement. In a strange case from north-west Spain, dated 858, the woman Letasia confessed to having committed adultery with the servus Ataulf, during which affair the couple also managed to con- sume four cows as well as a quite extraordinary amount of cheese (sixty rounds), none of which belonged to them. She offered all her property to Ataulf’s master in compensation for both the cheeses and the affair, and was
15 Robert Bartlett, Trial by Fire and Water (Oxford, 1986), 29–33.
16 Tumbos del Monasterio de Sobrado de los Monjes, ed. Pilar Loscertales de García de Valdeavellano (Madrid, 1976), no. 75. 17 Colección documental de la Catedral de León, ed. José Manuel Ruiz Asencio, vol. 3 (León, 1987), no. 561. 18 Cartulario de “Sant Cugat” del Vallés, ed. José Rius Serra, vol. 1 (Barcelona, 1945), no. 218. Adam Kosto, Making Agreements in Medieval Catalonia: Power, Order, and the Written Word, 1000–1200 (Cambridge, 2001), at 48–49. 19 The clause for Sentemir’s case is Liber iudiciorum vii, 5, 2, ed. Karl Zeumer, Leges Visigothorum, mgh Leges i, 1 (Hanover, 1902); it in fact stated that enslavement should be the punishment only for humiliores, whereas potentiores would forfeit a quarter of their property.
Barthélemy has pointed out, the monks then received him not as a serf, but in a looser kind of association, a “half-measure,” with no mention of rituals typi- cal of entry into servitude: his very public act of contrition (in addition, per- haps, to the fact that the monks had earlier been responsible for the death of his son) may have been enough to pressure them into showing mercy.20 A late eleventh-century case from the Bodmin Gospels similarly highlights the importance of rituals of submission even when the accused was able to redeem himself: Putrael, who was about to be penally enslaved to one Ælfric for an unspecified wrong, had to plead with Ælfric’s brother to intercede in order to allow him to pay in cash and kind instead: in this case allowing him to redeem himself at all was being presented as a great favour, and every effort was made to make him understand that he had a very narrow escape. His humiliation was witnessed by a correspondingly large number of important people, both lay and clerical.21 Failing the capacity to make an immediate post-judgement deal of this kind, the condemned would be handed over directly to the claimant. It seems to have been largely left up to the latter whether this would mean death, unfree service, or sale on to a third party. Penal enslavement to the offended party could result in very different scenarios. The working and living conditions associated with penal enslavement were as varied as those associated with early medieval unfreedom in general. Its consequences in terms of lived expe- rience partly depended on what the guilty party had to offer. Free smallhold- ers, with land to hand over along with themselves, seem to have mostly continued to occupy and cultivate whatever land they had previously owned, with the difference that they could no longer dispose of this property freely and would have had to hand over a share of their crop. But this minimal- disruption model did not apply in all cases: the young girl from Fortunatus’s poem, who had little to offer but herself, was more likely to become a domestic slave than anything else, and it is clear that some penally enslaved persons
20 Loir-et-Cher, Archives départementales, Blois, 16 H 118, no. 11 (= ARTEM no. 2277,
22 See below, 50, 53, 59. Lombard law only allowed iudices to sell thieves abroad if they had been caught three times: Liutprand 80 (ed. Bluhme, Leges Langobardorum). 23 Gregory of Tours, Histories vi, 36, at 306–307; the expression comes from Vergil, Aeneid iii, 56–57. 24 Catalunya Carolíngia iv: els comtats d’Osona i de Manresa, ed. Ramón Ordeig i Mata (Barcelona, 1999), part 1, no. 392. For another case of a woman transferring her son’s mur- derer to a third party, from 953, see Catalunya Carolíngia iv, part 2, no. 706.
In such cases, the practical outcome looks very similar to getting help with the compensation payment, but important differences remained. Crucially, the intervention had a different meaning: although it did amount to a gesture of kindness to the offender, it did not amount to a public act of support for his actions, or to solidarity with him in the prosecution of the case itself. It was, instead, a charitable act. The purchase price may have also been lower than the price of the compensation payment: wherever amounts are stated, they are a long way off the sort of scale involved for direct compensation – as with the 20 solidi it took to redeem the errant priest in the Gregory of Tours story above, or the 30 involved in the case of Felix from Vic. In a case from the church of Santillana, dated to 15 May 1062, a woman named Gatea, who had had a thief as her lover but failed to denounce him, was con- demned to pay the staggeringly high sum of 300 solidi as his accomplice, which she predictably found herself unable to pay. She was enslaved by the judges and bought by a priest called Felix for the price of two pieces of white linen canvas, together amounting to 33 cubits – a long way off the compensation payment (whether Felix was as nice as Nectar and freed her afterwards is not said).25 Purchase of the penally enslaved by a third party was, therefore, a way of set- tling the case which still went some way towards compensating the plaintiffs even if the offenders found no one to help pay compensation, without having either to kill them or keep them directly in their own service. It also allowed sympathetic bystanders who would not, or could not, go so far as to offer direct support during the court case to intervene with a lower level of financial and social commitment – either by freeing them, or, if keeping them, by at least removing them from the direct control of those whom they had harmed, and thus helping to ensure they would not be put to death. Needless to say, they would also have been procuring labour at the same time, but this did not neces- sarily detract from the sense that buying penally enslaved persons was a good and charitable action, even if the purchase did not immediately lead to redemp- tion and freedom. At any rate, Frankish formulae (documentary models), which preserve several texts in which penally enslaved persons address their third- party buyers in order to acknowledge their new relationship with them, show that praising the pietas of one’s buyer was seen as good form.26
25 Documentos para la historia de las instituciones de León y de Castilla (siglos x–xiii), ed. Eduardo de Hinojosa y Naveros (Madrid, 1919), doc. xv; cited in Charles Verlinden, L’esclavage dans l’Europe médiévale, vol. 1 (Bruges, 1955), 137. 26 Formulae Andecavenses 3, ed. Karl Zeumer, Formulae Merowingici et Karolini Aevi, mgh Leges v (Hanover, 1886), and tr. Alice Rio, The Formularies of Angers and Marculf: Two
Temporariness and Compliance
The condition of the penally enslaved may indeed have been more likely to be temporary than that of other unfree persons, including in cases where plain- tiffs kept the new dependants in their own service. Lombard law distinguished according to the scale of the crime: while all those “prodigal or ruined” persons who could not pay compensation had to be handed over as slaves to the plain- tiff, those who owed under 20 solidi were explicitly transferred only temporar- ily, until they could pay off their debt.27 Elsewhere, there are also hints that they could expect preferential access to manumission, especially on the death of their new master. This phenomenon is especially visible in Anglo-Saxon England.28 The woman Wynflæd, in a mid-tenth century will, listed a number of men and women to whom she wished to grant freedom after her death, and went on to ask her children to free for the good of her soul any other penal slaves (witeth- eow) whom she might have left out, going out of her way to say she had enslaved them herself.29 Highlighting her own part in their fate could be inter- preted as a mark of contrition, if she felt she should free first those whom she had had a direct hand in enslaving. On the other hand, the list of names is so long that she could not possibly have enslaved them all as a successful plain- tiff herself, even allowing for an exceptionally litigious personality. It is possi- ble, therefore, that she was highlighting her role in their enslavement not out of guilt, but, on the contrary, because she was rather proud of it – if she had acquired them as a third party, as a charitable gesture. Reading this as an act of charity would not necessarily have conflicted with her decision only to free them at her death. The choice to redeem at one’s death people who had been enslaved specifi- cally as a result of guilt, as opposed to those who had simply been born into unfreedom, may also have carried an added religious significance: it mirrored Christ’s redemption of a guilty humanity through his own death, thus opening to it the possibility of salvation – a salvation which testators were of course hoping
Merovingian Legal Handbooks (Liverpool, 2008), 51–52; Formulae Marculfi ii, 28 (tr. Rio, 211); Formulae Arvernenses 5. On this type of text, see Alice Rio, Legal Practice and the Written Word: Frankish Formulae, c. 500–1000 (Cambridge, 2009). 27 Liutprand 152; see also Aistulf 22 (ed. Bluhme, Leges Langobardorum). 28 Pelteret, Slavery, 120–123. 29 Anglo-Saxon Wills, ed. Dorothy Whitelock (Cambridge, 1930), no. 3, at 10–13; = Sawyer no. 1539 (
30 The concept of Christ’s redemption in those terms was particularly developed by Augustine: e.g. De Trinitate XIII.xiv.18; original sin had enslaved humanity to the Devil, and full freedom could be restored only through Christ: De civitate Dei, xiv, 11. The link between manumission and salvation could be made through Luke 6:37, Dimittite et dimit- temini (“Forgive, and you shall be forgiven,” or in a closer translation, and more to the point, “Release, and you shall be released,” cited in a manumission document in Formulae Salicae Lindenbrogianae no. 9, ed. Zeumer, Formulae, 273), echoed in the Pater Noster (Dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris). I am grateful to Thomas Charles-Edwards for this point. 31 These are the wills of Bishop Ælfsige of Winchester (Anglo-Saxon Wills no. 4, at 16–17; = Sawyer no. 1491); Bishop Ælfwold of Crediton (Sawyer no. 1492); Archbishop Ælfric (Anglo- Saxon Wills no. 18, at 54–55; = Sawyer no. 1488); the woman Ælfgifu (Anglo-Saxon Wills no. 8, at 20–21; = Sawyer no. 1484); the ealdorman Ælfheah (Anglo-Saxon Wills no. 9, at 24–25; = Sawyer no. 1485); and the Ætheling Æthelstan (Anglo-Saxon Wills no. 20, at 56–57; = Sawyer no. 1503). The Synod of Chelsea of 816 had ruled that any English people enslaved during the lifetime of a bishop were to be freed on his death (Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents relating to Great Britain and Ireland, eds. Arthur W. Haddan and William Stubbs (Oxford, 1869–1878), III, 583, Chapter X, cited in Pelteret, Slavery, 83). The practice was obviously not systematic, and some penally enslaved persons could be transferred with land they were living on: e.g. Sawyer no. 1285. 32 Colección documental de Otero de las Dueñas, eds. José Antonio Fernández Flórez and Marta Herrero de la Fuente, vol. 1 (León, 1999), nos. 150–151. 33 The text quoted in the charter is from Liber iudiciorum III, 3, 1, but the given reference is to III, 3, 2, and this latter clause, which deals with a couple who wish to stay together, is indeed more to the point.
34 Capitularia i, no. 39, c. 8; ii, no. 273B, c. 34; Leges Henrici Primi 89.3, ed. Leslie J. Downer (Oxford, 1972). What legislators insisted lords absolutely must not do was to treat their dependants sometimes as slaves and sometimes as free, according to what suited them: ii Cnut 20.1, ed. and tr. Agnes J. Robertson, The Laws of the Kings of England: From Edmund to Henry i (Cambridge, 1925); Leges Henrici Primi 78.2b.
to put your arm on my neck and cause myself to be handed over to you by the hair of my head before witnesses, in such a way that until I am able to return your solidi, I must be in your service and do whatever tasks you yourself or your subordinates order, and if I seem negligent or slow in this, I promise that you may order the same discipline to be inflicted upon my back as on your other servi.37
35 Ine 62 (Attenborough, Laws). 36 Capitularia i, no. 20, c. 19; no. 41, c. 3; no. 70, c. 3; no. 74, c. [1]; no. 139, c. 2; ii, no. 201, c. 2. Also Concilia aevi Merovingici, ed. Friedrich Maassen, mgh Leges iii, 1 (Hanover, 1893): Concilium incerti loci, c. 14, at 195. 37 Formulae Pithoei fragmenta 75 (= Formulae Bignonianae 27) (Zeumer, Formulae). Temporariness, as well as the difficulty of repayment, is again emphasised in Bavarian law, which stipulated that no Bavarian should lose his life or inheritance except for rebel- lion, but, if he could not compensate his victim, should serve until he had earned enough
This is a very different way of approaching the issue, but one equally concerned with controlling behaviour by maintaining the enslaved person’s stake in stick- ing to the dispute settlement. Pledging was in theory temporary – though it was probably less so in reality, since one has to wonder how often people did end up repaying their debt. Using free status as a loan security seems to have been a fairly standard practice in other, more straightforward instances of debt as well.38 In the case of penal self-pledging, though, it had a striking additional twist, in that it confirmed the permanence of the debt beyond the point of enslavement: all was not made square through this arrangement – indeed, rather than cancelling out the debt, it had the effect of making it ongoing, fixed in a holding pattern. It also allowed the possibility of conditional reinsertion within the local community at large. More than the hope of manumission, the possibility of future release from penal self-pledging would have encouraged and pressured the pledge-giver not only to play by the rules with respect to their new lord, but also to continue to seek support and approval from the rest of the locality, in a bid to succeed eventually where they had failed initially – namely, in securing some sort of financial backing and help from third parties in order to pay com- pensation. If they failed, it would presumably never be paid, and their unfree status would become in fact, even if not in principle, permanent. This made the issue of timing much less urgent, and gave everyone involved, whether third parties or plaintiff, the option to intervene at any point of their choosing during the duration of the pledge-giver’s service. The expectation that penal enslavement might be only temporary could therefore play an important part in ensuring that the agreement would be stuck to, even by those who were most disadvantaged by it. The fact that this possibility was conditional on good behaviour might have brought the practice closer to rehabilitation as it might be understood in later periods. In some cases, indeed, penal enslavement does seem to be connected with penitential concerns in a Christian sense. Charlemagne, in his Admonitio generalis, famously took issue with people who wandered about in his kingdom naked, wearing irons, and generally making a spectacle of themselves on the pretext of doing penance: these people, he said, if they had committed a crime, would
“over months and years”: Lex Baiwariorum, ed. E. von Schwind, mgh Leges i, 5, 2 (Hannover, 1926), ii, 1, at 292–293; translated in Carl Hammer, A Large-Scale Slave Society of the Early Middle Ages: Slaves and Their Families in Early Medieval Bavaria (Aldershot, 2002), 78. 38 Rio, “Self-sale,” 671–672.
39 Capitularia i, no. 22, c. 79. 40 Penitential of Theodore i, 3, 1, ed. Hermann Joseph Schmitz, Die Bussbücher und die Bussdisciplin der Kirche (Mainz, 1883), 527; tr. John T. McNeill and Helena Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance, new edn. (New York, 1990), 186. 41 Penitential of Finnian 43–44, ed. Ludwig Bieler, The Irish Penitentials (Dublin, 1963), 90–91, tr. McNeill, Penance, 95–96. Other cases cited by McNeill as prescribing service as penance in Welsh and Irish texts (e.g. at 252, 254) do not in fact deal with unfree status, but with serving “in place of a son” the parents of the man whom one had slain, to compensate them for the filial duty they had been deprived of. Filial duty could be extremely binding in its own right, as is made clear from story of Librán in Adomnán of Iona’s Vita Columbani, ii, 39, eds. Alan O. Anderson and Marjorie O. Anderson (Oxford, 1991). 42 On slavery as a consequence of sin, see e.g. Augustine, De civitate Dei xix.15.
The Limits of Responsibility: Laws and Family Strategies
Out of all the parties connected with a wrongdoer, one might expect kin to have been the most supportive. For some higher-status families, the prospect of unfreedom for one of their members must have been unthinkable, and its prevention worth any cost. Kin groups’ response thus no doubt depended partly on status and self-image. Families higher up the social scale, however, were also those for which this outcome was least likely in any case, since they would also have been those best placed to negotiate a special arrangement or discount on the settlement. Kin groups had a basic duty of solidarity, but this does not necessarily mean that they backed all of their members with equal assiduousness. Given a finite amount of resources, families might have to make difficult choices regarding whether, or how far, to help with compensation payments. The prospect of a family member becoming unfree might well, of course, be deeply worrying, not least because others risked being tainted by association, making them more open to accusations of being unfree themselves. But families could take a distinctly unsentimental approach to this problem too, as is made clear from a Frankish capitulary forbidding anyone from killing an unfree family member out of fear of being categorised as unfree themselves.43 If anything, the importance of kin solidarity, arguably the most fundamental cornerstone of early medieval society, encouraged a highly disciplined approach to family relationships. The fate of the errant priest’s lover in the Gregory of Tours story cited above is enough to show that family members could be the most ruthless of all possible enforcers. Kin groups, for a start, were far from being strictly horizontal organisations. Some members of the same family could be vastly more powerful than others, and their relationship with weaker members more akin to patronage than to solidarity between equals. That more distant kinsmen could exact a high price for their intervention is evident from the case of the Irishman Librán in Adomnán of Iona’s Life of Saint Columba: when he was convicted of a killing and risked being put to death, a family member redeemed him, but on the condition that Librán become his unfree dependant, blurring the line between kin and other possible third parties.44 Family members’ involvement could be based on just as much strategising and calculation as any other party’s.
43 Capitularia i, no. 39, c. 5. The penalty was death for the culprit and enslavement for his children. 44 Vita Columbani, ii, 39. This was almost certainly a member of his own family rather than the victim’s, though the text unfortunately does not make this completely unambiguous.
Much of this calculation must have been based on the impact of the penal enslavement of one family member on the others. In general, legislation mostly tried to shield families from the consequences of the enslavement of one of their members. Many laws on the subject were especially concerned with pro- tecting the unity of the married couple, which might be jeopardised under the circumstances. While most law-makers took a very dim view of mixed-status marriages in principle, in the case of enslavement of one member of an already married couple, ensuring the permanence of the marriage took precedence: the free wife of an enslaved man was encouraged to stay with her husband, and her freedom as well as that of their children was protected – though penal enslavement still counted as one of the few legitimate grounds for divorce, at least in the earlier Carolingian capitularies.45 But the expectation of solidarity and commonality of interests in a marriage could cut both ways: for instance, a wife and children might be seen as having directly benefited from a theft, bringing up the question of how far they should also be involved in the punishment. A law of Ine ruled that a thief who stole without the knowledge of his wife and children should pay 60 shillings, but that, if the wife and any children above the age of ten knew of his actions, they should all be enslaved. In the early eleventh century, Cnut gave more precise directions for ascertaining knowledge: the wife was guilty only if the stolen goods were found in places to which she kept the keys, such as her storeroom, her chest and her coffer, but not in the rest of the cottage, on the understand- ing that a wife could not stop her husband from bringing home anything he liked. Cnut also tried to limit the exposure of very young children to penal enslavement with their parents, saying that “those who have never tasted food”
On this story, see Thomas Charles-Edwards, Early Irish and Welsh Kinship (Oxford, 1993), 317–319; on penal enslavement in Ireland in general, Fergus Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law (Dublin, 1988), 97–98 and 215–216. For a particularly mysterious case, see David A. Binchy, “The Saga of Fergus Mac Léti,” Ériu 16 (1952), 33–48, at 39; cited in Robin Chapman Stacey, Dark Speech: The Performance of Law in Early Ireland (Philadelphia, pa, 2007), 69. For Wales, see the example of the thief in Vita Sancti Cadoci 33, ed. Arthur Wade-Evans, Vitae Sanctorum Britanniae et Genealogiae (Cardiff, 1944), 94–97, and two cases from the Llandaff charters, no. 127a and no. 218 (from 955), ed. J. Gwenogvryn Evans, The Text of the Book of Llan Dav (Oxford, 1893), 127 and 218–221; cited in Wendy Davies, Wales in the Early Middle Ages (Leicester, 1982), 64; Wendy Davies, An Early Welsh Microcosm: Studies in the Llandaff Charters (London, 1978), 43, 167 and 180–181. 45 Capitularia i, no. 16, c. 6; no. 157, c. 4; no. 158, c. 1; ii, no. 201, c. 15 in ms. Paris BnF 4613; no. 252, canones extravagantes 2 expressly forbade enslavement as a cause for divorce. Earlier, see Concilium incerti loci, c. 14, ed. Maassen, Concilia aevi Merovingici.
46 Ine 7.1 (Attenborough, Laws); ii Cnut 76.1–3 (Robertson, Laws). On young children, see also Wulfstan, Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, ed. Dorothy Bethurum, The Homilies of Wulfstan (Oxford, 1957), at 262, lines 45–48; tr. Dorothy Whitelock, English Historical Documents, vol. 1, 2nd edn. (London, 1979), 930. Wulfstan later had a hand in drafting Cnut’s legislation. 47 A genealogy of unfree dependents of Santa Fiore in Arezzo, dating from around 1100, mentioned as an ancestor of living servi a certain Lupolus, who had been enslaved for a theft in another place; but the subsequent unfreedom of his descendants does not seem to have come from this, but from the fact that his son, Dominicus Scaramella, subse- quently moved to Santa Fiore to work as a cook, swearing an oath to the abbot Rodulf “sicut servus domino,” and married an unfree woman there. The list probably included Lupolus and Dominicus only to ram home the point that all previous generations had been unfree one way or another, thus strengthening the monastery’s hold on its current dependents. Documenti per la storia della città di Arezzo nel medio evo, ed. Ubaldo Pasqui, vol. 1 (Florence, 1988), no. 293, at 401. 48 Capitularia i, no. 74, c. [1]. 49 Liber iudiciorum iii, 3, 1; iii, 4, 1; iii, 4, 2 - all from Ervig’s recension. 50 Liber iudiciorum iii, 6, 2.
51 Liber iudiciorum v, 6, 5. 52 Ribuarian law is an exception, and extends the debt of a man too poor to pay compensa- tion to his children for up to three generations (Lex Ribuaria 12, 2, eds. Franz Beyerle and Rudolf Buchner, mgh Leges I, 3, 2 (Hannover, 1954), 78). This clause, however, features only in the context of exceptionally high fines of 600 solidi, which may have constituted a special case (that is, actions too serious to be made up for by one single person’s forfeiting of freedom). 53 Wihtred 26 (Attenborough, Laws). 54 Ine 24; see also ii Edward 6, also denying wergeld to a penal slave’s relatives (Attenborough, Laws).
55 vi Æthelstan 12.2 (Attenborough, Laws). 56 Catalunya Carolíngia iv, part 3, no. 1517.
57 Janet L. Nelson and Alice Rio, “Women and Laws in Early Medieval Europe,” in Judith Bennett and Ruth Mazo Karras, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 2013), 103–117. 58 Liber iudiciorum iii, 4, 14 (Ervig). 59 Rothari 221 (ed. Bluhme, Leges Langobardorum). If they failed to do this, the king’s agents were to place her with the palace’s slavewomen. See further Liutprand 24 and 98. Later Carolingian legislation transferred them to the master of the male slave they married: clearly they were not interested in using this legislation to acquire more slaves of the fisc (Capitularia i, no. 159, c. 1; ii, no. 201, cc. 13–14 in ms Paris BnF 4613). 60 Capitularia i, no. 157, c. 3; no. 158, c. 2.
61 Pactus Legis Salicae 13.8 and 25.4; Lex Ribuaria 61, 14–18, ed. Franz Beyerle, mgh Leges i, 3, 2 (Hanover, 1954); Liber iudiciorum iii, 2, 3; Liber constitutionum 35, ed. Ludwig R. von Salis, Leges Burgundionum, mgh Leges i, 2, 1 (Hanover, 1892); Lex Alamannorum 17, eds. Karl A. Eckhardt and Karl Lehmann, mgh Leges i, 5, 1 (Hanover, 1966); Capitularia I, no. 142, c. 3. 62 Formulae Andecavenses 59; Formulae Marculfi ii, 29; Cartae Senonicae 6; Collectio Flaviniacensis 102; Formulae Salicae Merkelianae 31; Formulae Salicae Bignonianae 11; Formulae Salicae Lindenbrogianae 20; Formulae Morbacenses 18 and 19; Formulae Augienses Coll. B 41 (ed. Zeumer, Formulae). Rio, Legal Practice, 216–223. 63 Mark Meyerson, “Slavery and the Social Order: Mudejars and Christians in the Kingdom of Valencia,” Medieval Encounters, 1 (1995), 144–173. 64 Capitularia ii, no. 273B, c. 22. This is in contrast with i, no. 20, c. 19 and no. 74, c. [1], which had ruled the defaulter should hand himself over to the fisc as a pledge.
Conclusion
Early medieval penal enslavement was very unlike Roman or modern penal ser- vitude in that the needs and aims it fulfilled were not only, nor even primarily, the state’s. Penal enslavement is much easier to document for periods and places where it formed part of a penal system controlled by a big interventionist state – as for instance under Rome, or in China, where it seems to have consti- tuted a major source of slaves.67 But it is important to remember that this was not the only form it could take. In small-state societies it responded to a funda- mentally different logic, as the outcome of largely private arrangements struck between disputing parties or between their kin groups. The evidence for such
65 Capitularia i, no. 77, c. 15; no. 20, c. 23. 66 In later medieval Spain, it applied only to Muslims, not Christians (Meyerson, “Slavery”). A case cited by Hyams for thirteenth-century England stipulates that if a tenant tried to leave his land or failed to pay his rent, he and his family were to become unfree: the case itself only presents a hypothetical way of dealing with a future default, and is much more exclusively concerned with lords’ labour strategies (Paul Hyams, Kings, Lords and Peasants (Oxford, 1980), 183, citing PRO E326/12169). 67 Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death (Cambridge, MA, 1982), 126–129.
68 See Allan Fisher and Humphrey Fisher, Slavery and Muslim Society in Africa: The Institution in Saharan and Sudanic Africa, and the Trans-Saharan Trade (London, 1970), 71–76; Carol MacCormack, “Wono: Institutionalized Dependency in Shrebro Descent Groups,” in Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff, eds., Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives (Madison, WI, 1977), 181–203, at 195–196; in the same volume, see also James Vaughan, “Mafakur: A Limbic Institution of the Margi (Nigeria),” 85–102, at 91; Gerald Hartwig, “Changing Forms of Servitude among the Kerebe of Tanzania,” 261–285, at 269– 270; Svend Holsoe, “Slavery and Economic Response among the Vai (Liberia and Sierra Leone),” 287–303, at 290 and 294; Martin Klein, “Servitude among the Wolof and Sereer of Senegambia,” 335–363, at 343. For the example of the Igbo, see Jack S. Harris, “Some Aspects of Slavery in Southeastern Nigeria,” Journal of Negro History, 27 (1942), 37–54, cited by Patterson, Slavery, 128. Most of these examples relate to a pre-1800 situation. 69 Regardless of the view one wishes to take on the scale of European slave exports to Muslim regions, no evidence exists that it involved penally enslaved persons in any sig- nificant way (for a maximalist reading, see Michael McCormick, The Origins of the European Economy (Cambridge, 2001); also Jeffrey Fynn-Paul, “Empire, Monotheism and Slavery in the Greater Mediterranean Region from Antiquity to the Early Modern Era,” Past and Present, 205 (2009), 3–40).
70 On “social death”, see Patterson, Slavery.
Pieter Spierenburg
He claimed that he could read the mind of rogues contemplating their future punishment. Dirk Volkerts Coornhert had been provisionally jailed for six months by the Spanish forces in 1566–7. While in custody he had spoken with ordinary criminals. They did not fear death, they said; although their demise on the scaffold was inevitable, it lay too far ahead to really worry. For the moment, their illegal activities earned them a comfortable life. For Coornhert the solution to the inherent problem was obvious: subject them to a penalty worse than death. Rogues, he confidently asserted, found nothing more repre- hensible than hard work. He proposed three types of forced labour, two of which – works of public utility and rowing on galleys – were already in use. The third type consisted of building prisons whose inmates were to suffer under a regime of hard work. He published his ideas in 1587, when plans resem- bling his third proposal were already under discussion in Amsterdam.2 Coornhert was no principled opponent of the death penalty, which would have been unthinkable in his time. For another two hundred and fifty years or so, courts in the Netherlands as well as other European countries continued to impose scaffold punishments on what they considered as the most serious offenders.3 For minor offenders, measures like banishment were common.
1 This contribution incorporates parts of my The Body and the State, originally published as Chapter 2 of Norval Morris and David J. Rothman eds., The Oxford History of the Prison (Oxford, 1995). Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press, Inc. 2 Pieter Spierenburg, “Boeventucht en vrijheidsstraffen. Coornherts betekenis voor het ont- staan en de ontwikkeling van het gevangeniswezen in Nederland,” in Cyrille Fijnaut and Pieter Spierenburg, eds., Scherp toezicht. Van “Boeventucht” tot “Samenleving en Criminaliteit” (Arnhem, 1990), 11–30. 3 On scaffold punishments, among others, Pieter Spierenburg, The Spectacle of Suffering. Executions and the Evolution of Repression: from a Preindustrial Metropolis to the European experience (Cambridge, 1984); Richard van Dülmen, Theater des Schreckens. Gerichtspraxis und Strafrituale in der frühen Neuzeit (München, 1985); Vic A.C. Gatrell, The Hanging Tree. Execution and the English People, 1770–1868 (Oxford, 1990); Richard J. Evans, Rituals of Retribution. Capital Punishment in Germany, 1600–1987 (Oxford, 1996). Jürgen Martschukat, Inszeniertes Töten. Eine Geschichte der Todesstrafe vom 17. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert. (Köln, 2000); Pascal Bastien, L’exécution publique à Paris au 18e siècle. Une histoire des rituels judici aires (Seyssel, 2006).
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Imprisonment at forced labour, however, developed alongside the drama of the scaffold as an increasingly important sanction. Moreover, the prison work- houses which emerged from the late sixteenth century onward were meant originally, not for serious offenders, but for a host of minor deviants. From a European perspective, it was not until the eighteenth century that the impris- onment of criminals became common. Thus, the history of prison workhouses represents a crucial episode within the genealogy of convict labour. The story of these institutions forms the main subject of this essay, along with that of other types of forced labour in early modern Europe. Penal change in the early modern period reflected new attitudes toward the body. Growing sensitivity to violence and an aversion to physical suffering had an impact on ideas about appropriate forms of punishment. Developments in the family, too, were crucial to the evolution of imprisonment in the early modern period. Offenders who served a term in prison were viewed as having escaped the disciplining bonds of the family. As inmates, there- fore, they received a quasi-patriarchal form of discipline. Thus the history of punishment and prisons entails not only political and institutional processes, such as the formation of national states and the refinement of sys- tems of justice, but also changes that belong to the realm of socio-cultural history.
Penal Bondage
A new type of judicial sanction, midway in severity between the scaffold and minor punishments such as banishment, grew popular during the early mod- ern period. Eventually, courts came to use it almost as frequently as physical sanctions. Instead of being flogged or hanged, some offenders were incarcer- ated in workhouses or forced to perform labour in some other setting. We may use the term “bondage” to denote any punishment that puts severe restrictions on the condemned person’s freedom of action and movement, including but not limited to imprisonment. Indeed, the term embraces both punitive and penal institutions, a distinction worth making because several forms of puni- tive bondage became penal, in the sense of fully belonging to the criminal jus- tice system, only later in their history. Bondage always carried the loss of liberty and usually involved forced labour as well. Especially in early modern prisons, the work program supposedly disciplined and punished the inmates. The obligation to work distinguished prisons from almshouses, asylums, and hospitals, as well as from workhouses whose inmates worked voluntarily and not as punishment.
Imprisonment and other forms of bondage grew increasingly popular in several European countries as early as the sixteenth century. Thus, far from representing a radical change in the penal system, the proliferation of peniten- tiaries in Europe after 1800 was the product of gradual developments during the preceding centuries. One such development, the emergence of bondage, reflected changing ideas about idleness and labour on the one hand and renewed interest in enforcing morality on the other. Ideas about idleness and labour had already started to change before the Reformation and an interest in vigorous moral enforcement emerged from both the Reformation and the Counter Reformation.4 More often than other forms of bondage, imprisonment was designed to enforce morality. Confinement as a punitive sanction had several unique features. Because its execution spanned more than a single moment in time, confinement implied a longer-term effort to change the behavior of people. Indeed, many of those sent to prisons during this period were confined because of their way of life. Within the prison, the agents of discipline tried to correct bad habits rather than to punish actual crimes. Phrases like “evil conduct,” “laziness,” and “disreputable behavior” occurred frequently in documents describing the conduct that prison workhouses strove to eliminate. Relatively unspecific, these terms simply referred to behavior that, according to the agents of discipline, ought to be improved. Sometimes termed “civilization offensives,” these efforts to reform immoral people were recurrent in the early modern period. Churchmen as well as lay- men organized these moral campaigns. Protestant and Catholic clergy directed their efforts at concubinage, premarital intercourse, and a number of “super- stitious” popular practices. Laypeople, meanwhile, tended to favor “societies for the reformation of manners,” founded in England from the 1690s onward. These societies promoted the imprisonment of drunkards, gamblers, and simi- lar offenders. In general, the early modern period was one of increasing moral entrepreneurship aimed at “civilising” the behavior of the whole populace. Since anyone might lead a life that his or her peers judged immoral, upper- class people were also imprisoned for this reason. Idleness, the other target of reformers, was considered the habit of a specific sort of people. This well-defined social group, the stratum of vagrants and beggars, figured very prominently in the founding documents of prison work- houses. The idle not only were imprisoned but also, in certain countries, were
4 On the historical background to the rise of prison workhouses and bondage generally: Pieter Spierenburg, The Prison Experience. Disciplinary Institutions and their Inmates in Early Modern Europe (New Brunswick, nj, 1991), Chapter 2.
5 Brian Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice. The Social Institutions of a Catholic State, to 1620 (Oxford, 1971); Ruth Pike, Penal Servitude in Early Modern Spain (Madison and London, 1983); André Zysberg, Les galeriens. Vies et destins de 60,000 forçats sur les galéres de France, 1680–1748 (Paris, 1987).
6 Spierenburg, The Prison Experience, 136. 7 Guy Geltner, The Medieval Prison. A Social History (Princeton, 2008). 8 Spierenburg, The Prison Experience, 1991: 25–6.
The Early Modern Prison Workhouse
We are relatively well informed about the daily experiences of convicts con- fined to early modern institutions for forced labour. Records illuminate two significant aspects of workhouse life: (1) the concept of the prison workhouse as a household and the role of its managers in this household and (2) the nature of the institutional regime and the inmates’ reactions to it.11 The management of prison workhouses did not change very much between the introduction of the first such institutions around 1600 and the first half of the nineteenth century, when solitary confinement and the panoptic principle took centre stage. Most workhouses were managed by a complex hierarchy of supervisors consisting of four levels of officers, the third of which bears particular relevance to our discussion. The first level included the magistrates
9 Quoted in Abbot E. Smith, Colonists in Bondage. White Servitude and Convict Labor in America, 1607–1776 (Chapel Hill, 1947), 92–93. 10 John M. Beattie, Crime and the Courts in England, 1660–1800 (Oxford, 1986); A. Roger Ekirch, Bound for America. The Transportation of British Convicts to the Colonies, 1718–1775 (Oxford, 1987). 11 See Spierenburg, The Prison Experience, Chapters 6 and 8. More recently also: Falk Bretschneider, Gefangene Gesellschaft. Eine Geschichte der Einsperrung in Sachsen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Konstanz, 2008).
Gesche Heimb. We do not know whether she was the widow of the previous oeconomus, but whatever exceptional situation put a woman in charge, it lasted for only nine months. On September 9, 1644, Gesche Heimb married Jacob Schumacher, who took the oath as oeconomus on October 17. When he died in February of the next year, Gesche Heimb exercised her function alone again until December 1646. The administrators finally bought her off, appoint- ing a new couple in her place. They explicitly noted that they did not think her incompetent, for she had always performed her duties well. The problem was simply that she had no desire to marry again. Records from Delft offer similar evidence that the authorities preferred to appoint couples to direct prison affairs. The administrators in 1736 advertised a job opening in the Delft, Leiden, and The Hague newspapers:
The regents of St. George’s Hospital, also prison workhouse, in the town of Delft notify everyone that the post of concherge in the said house is due to be vacated at the last day of September of this year 1736. Everyone interested, who is married, has a knowledge of the fabrication of cloth, worsted, and baize and possesses the required capabilities, is invited to report to the regents of the said house before 1 February 1736.
Six candidates replied, but only two merited serious attention. The administra- tors met and, having considered “the personalities, wives, and other circum- stances” of the two applicants, voted unanimously for Leendert van den Heuvel. Thus, not only did candidates have to be married but their wives’ char- acter formed an essential part of their qualifications. Delft followed similar procedures later in the eighteenth century; the word concherge was then defined as “indoor father.” Staff members usually lived in prison, in part to shore up the household structure. Unlike modern penitentiaries, which maintain a clear separation between confined inmates and an outside staff, early modern workhouses pro- vided staff living quarters that were part of the building as a whole. In Amsterdam, for example, both the indoor father and the master of discipline lived in the rasphouse. When Jan de Lange resigned as master of discipline because of old age, his successor moved into his living quarters. De Lange moved into one of the rooms of the indoor father, who happened to be his son-in-law. De Lange was eighty-four years old when he retired, which was probably exceptional. The ages of staff members in Dutch prisons were very seldom recorded, but most of the fathers and mothers in Hanseatic towns were in their forties or fifties. The mother of the Bremen zuchthaus, for example, was
The Development of the Prison as a Place of Punishment
There was one major exception to the regime of forced labour in prison. Some inmates were locked up because their relatives could not cope with them, or because the family feared that the unruly member might damage the family reputation, or both.12 In such cases, imprisonment served as a tool of private discipline. The family drew up a petition explaining why the individual should be imprisoned and the authorities decided whether or not to consent. Usually, private offenders were confined because of conduct considered immoral. Most of them had to work too. But a minority from wealthy and distinguished fami- lies avoided the labour program. Their relatives, who could well afford to pay
12 See in particular Pieter Spierenburg, Zwarte schapen. Losbollen, dronkaards en levensgeni eters in achtiende eeuwse beterhuizen (Hilversum, 1995).
13 See Spierenburg, The Prison Experience, Chapter 7. 14 Most recently on prison workhouses in Germany: Joel Harrington, “Escape from the great confinement. The genealogy of a German workhouse,” Journal of Modern History 71, 2 (1999), 308–338; Falk Brettschneider, Gefangene Gesellschaft.
15 Spierenburg, The Prison Experience, 161–70.
16 Zysberg, Les galériens. 17 Alan Williams, The Police of Paris, 1718–1789 (Baton Rouge and London, 1979); Erica-Marie Benabou, La prostitutions et la police des moeurs au 18e siècle (Paris, 1987). 18 Arlette Farge, Délinquance et criminalité. Le vol d’aliments á Paris au 18e siécle (Paris, 1974), 84.
Epilogue
Paradoxically, as soon as imprisonment was well-established as the primary penal sanction, politicians and lawyers lost confidence in the regime of forced labour. Throughout Europe, the nineteenth century was the age of solitary confinement. Even when not held in separate cells, inmates performed hardly any labour or they did unproductive work like walking a treadwheel. Although
19 Ekirch, Bound for America. 20 Beattie, Crime and the Courts in England, 546–612.
21 Maxwell-Stuart in this volume. 22 Toth 2006; Sanchez in this volume.
Stephan Steiner
In March 1747 a letter reached Vienna, which to the surprise of today’s reader was all about hosiery goods, namely 4,000 balls of wool, 1,000 men’s knee socks and 1,300 foot warmers to be put up for sale in the market.2 Addressed to the Hofkammer, the central department of finance in the Habsburg empire, the letter had been forwarded by the regional administra- tion of the Banat of Timişoara,3 a remote border region in the southeast, which had been conquered from the Ottoman empire only three decades before. To be sure, the detailed accounting in that file grew out of the bureaucrats’ desire for appreciation of their efficacy, but for the historian it also provides a brief glimpse into an unexpected world of unfree labour. All the spinning and knitting that had materialized into those woollen products turns out to have been produced by a group of women detained in the local workhouse. This little episode draws us right into a set of questions that has to a great extent been a stepchild of research so far: Did the Habsburg empire in the early modern period make use of convict labour? Was manual work part of a newly emerging penal system that slowly transformed from being an executioner of corporal punishment to an instrument of re-education and correction? Did forced population movements play a part in this scheme? Were there any prof- its, either monetary, societal or disciplinary, to be gained from experimenting with compulsory labour? And finally, did the Austrian monarchy play any significant role in the deportation frenzy of the 17th and 18th centuries?
1 For discussing and editing this chapter I am deeply indebted to Pelin Tünaydın from Sabanci Universitesi (Istanbul). This chapter is dedicated to William O’Reilly. 2 Vienna, ÖStA (Austrian State Archives), HKA (Archive of the Hofkammer), Ältere Banater Akten (Elder Records of the Banat of Timişoara), Nr. 17, March 1747, fol. 91v, Summarischer extract“. 3 Josef Wolf, “Das Banat als historische Region,” in Thede Kahl, Michael Metzeltin, and Mihai- Răzvan Ungureanu, eds., Rumänien. Raum und Bevölkerung. Geschichte und Geschichtsbilder. Kultur. Gesellschaft und Politik heute. Wirtschaft. Recht und Verfassung. Historische Regionen (Vienna and Berlin, 2006), 903–932; Josef Kallbrunner, Das kaiserliche Banat I. Einrichtung und Entwicklung des Banats bis 1739 (Munich, 1958).
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In this chapter, I propose some answers to these questions by discussing deportation and convict labour in the Habsburg empire in general and by drawing on one very instructive example of such coercive measures in particu- lar, the so-called Temesvarer Wasserschub (Deportation by Water). I will do so by referring to archival material preserved in the Banater Akten (Records of the Banat of Timişoara), a voluminous section of the Austrian State Archives in Vienna. Despite the fact that it holds a great many documents concerning forced labour, this section of the archives has only rarely been consulted for writing on this particular chapter of the history of state violence in the Habsburg realm. Moreover, these archives reveal that many of those subject to penal labour and the Temesvarer Wasserschub were women, suggesting an early turn to state sanctions for the enforcement of sexual morality and proper gender roles. Finally the Ottoman empire, the main antagonist and challenger of the Habsburg rule for two hundred years, will serve as a rather unusual object of comparison.
Galleys, Fortress Construction and Prison Workhouses as Foundations of Convict Labour
Galley punishment was most probably first applied in the Habsburg monarchy in 1540, when a group of 90 Anabaptists suffered this penalty.4 Due to the absence of its own fleet for more than a century, the Habsburg rulers had to rely on the cooperation of sea powers like Venice or Genoa in order to execute such verdicts.5 With the takeover of Naples in 1707 the Habsburg empire finally acquired its own galleys, which were extensively used for convict labour until the loss of the region in 1734.6 A last flaring up of the already antiquated idea of galley-like punishment can be seen in the so-called Schiffziehen, the towing of boats by delinquents upstream the Danube, which was practised between
4 Josef Beck, Die Geschichtsbücher der Wiedertäufer in Oesterreich-Ungarn betreffend deren Schicksale in der Schweiz, Salzburg, Ober- und Niederoesterreich, Mähren, Tirol, Böhmen, Süd- Deutschland, Ungarn, Siebenbürgen und Süd-Russland in der Zeit von 1526 bis 1785 (Vienna, 1883), 146f. 5 Friedrich von Maasburg, Die Galeerenstrafe in den deutschen und böhmischen Erbländern Oesterreichs. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der heimischen Strafrechtspflege (Vienna, 1885), 6; Helfried Valentinitsch, “Galeerenstrafe und Zwangsarbeit an der Militärgrenze in der Frühen Neuzeit. Zur Geschichte des Strafvollzugs in den innerösterreichischen Ländern,” in Helfried Valentinitsch and Markus Steppan, eds., Festschrift für Gernot Kocher zum 60. Geburtstag (Graz, 2002), 343–344. 6 Maasburg, Galeerenstrafe, 7–11.
1783 and 1790.7 In spite of being regarded by contemporaries as a most wel- come alternative to death sentences, galley punishment, in fact, very often prolonged the life span of the delinquent only for a short while. Aside from work on the galleys, from the beginning of the 17th century convict labour was also used in fortress construction (opus publicum), mainly to be executed in Croatia, Slavonia and Hungary. The military border there – a long defence line against the Ottomans and a very distinct zone of administra- tion by the Hofkriegsrat (Court War Council)8 – seemed to the authorities the ideal place for turning delinquents into useful manpower. Nevertheless, reality quite often proved that custody, alimentation and accommodation were more expensive than the profits gained from the convicts’ work.9 In 1668 the first prison workhouse on Habsburg soil opened its doors in Wrocław; Vienna followed soon after in 1671. In the course of the following century such institutions spread region-wide across the empire. From Ackerghem to Opava, from Prague to Trieste, the new ideas about punishment, discipline and betterment reaped the fruits of victory.10 Deeply rooted in cameralism,11 soaring state ambitions finally culminated in everyday execution in detention centres all over the monarchy. As it has been noted
Cameralistic deliberations made the terms “discipline” and “correction” basic values of a society, which regarded diligence and the striving for acquisition as natural predispositions of human beings. Such were thought to be (re-)producible in every individual, even if prison, work- house, almshouse or orphanage had to function as intermediaries.12
7 Friedrich von Maasburg, Die Strafe des Schiffziehens in Oesterreich (1783–1790. [sic]). Nebst einem Rückblick auf das altösterreichische Gefängnißwesen (Vienna, 1890); Eva Macho, Joseph II. – Die ‘Condemnatio ad poenas extraordinarias’: Schiffziehen und Gassenkehren (Frankfurt a.M., Berlin, Bern, New York, Paris and Vienna, 1999). 8 Gunther Erich Rothenberg, The Austrian Military Border in Croatia, 1522–1747 (Urbana, 1960); Karl Kaser, Freier Bauer und Soldat. Die Militarisierung der agrarischen Gesellschaft in der kroatisch-slawonischen Militärgrenze (1535–1881) (Vienna, Cologne and Weimar, 1986). 9 Valentinitsch, Galeerenstrafe, 348–363. 10 Hannes Stekl, Österreichs Zucht- und Arbeitshäuser (Vienna, 1978); Gerhard Ammerer and Alfred Stefan Weiß, eds., Strafe, Disziplin und Besserung (Frankfurt a.M., Berlin, Bern, Brussels, New York, Oxford and Vienna, 2006). 11 Johann Joachim Becher, Polititischer Discurs Von den eigentlichen Ursachen/des Auff = und Abnehmens/der Städt/Länder und Republicken/in specie, Wie ein Land Volckreich und Nahrhafft zu machen/und in eine rechte Societatem Civilem zu bringen […] (Frankfurt, 1668), 647–649. 12 “Die kameralistischen Überlegungen machten die Vokabeln ‘Zucht’ und ‘Züchtigung’ zu Grundwerten einer Gesellschaft, die Fleiß und Erwerbsstreben als natürliche
The Transportation System as a New Element
Following a European trend, the emergence of forced labour on a broader scale in the Habsburg empire became closely linked to the implementation of deportation. However, whereas Portugal,13 Spain,14 Russia,15 France,16
Veranlagungen des Menschen ansah, die beim Einzelnen – und sei es auch durch die Einweisung in Zucht-, Arbeits-, Armen- oder Waisenhäuser – nur (wieder) geweckt werden mussten.” (Gerhard Ammerer, “Zucht- und Arbeitshäuser, Freiheitsstrafen und Gefängnisdiskurs in Österreich 1750–1850,” in Ammerer and Weiß, eds., Strafe, 8–9). 13 Portugal’s totally revolutionary and avant-garde policy to banish the so-called ‘scum’ out of its dungeons and prisons into the overseas colonies started as early as in the 15th century. The “population export” that began with the conquest of Ceuta in 1415 found its continua- tion in the abundant mass deportations of undesirable elements in the population, chiefly to Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil. Between 1550 and 1755, about 50.000 degredados (peo- ple forced into exile) were shifted back and forth within the Portuguese sphere of influence. See generally Timothy J. Coates, Convicts and Orphans. Forced and State-Sponsored Colonizers in the Portuguese Empire, 1550–1755 (Stanford, 2002), and his chapter in this volume. 14 Aside from some occasional transportations starting with its overseas expansion, Spain’s most spectacular case of deportation concerned the Moriscos, forcibly Christianised people who were living human relicts of the Moorish Culture and adherents of Islam first dispersed all over Spain in 1570. Between 1609 and 1614, 275.000 people were finally deported to North Africa or France, which meant eliminating an entire, undesirable and/ or recalcitrant segment of the population. See Pascual Boronat y Barrachina, Los Moriscos Españoles y su expulsión. Estudio histórico-crítico, 2 vols. (Valencia, 1901) and “Bibliografía General de Moriscos,” accessed October 21, 2012,
England17 and the Netherlands18 established this special means of population transfer during the 16th and 17th century, the Habsburg rulers were late start- ers. Only in the first third of the 18th century did they engage in forced migra- tions more systematically. Deportations of the early modern age in general were fed from a vast variety of sources, which frequently converged here for the first time, immediately producing a veritable torrent of devastation: the policies dealing with poverty, the radical changes in the penal system, matters of religion, population poli- tics, as well as colonial affairs – in different proportions – blended into an explosive mixture. This developed into a totally new mentality of governance, characterized by the extensive use of repression. The victims of these new poli- cies were turned into a mass of human misery that could be wantonly pushed hither and yon at will. While forced migrations are thoroughly researched internationally, analo- gous studies for the Habsburg empire were almost totally missing until recently.19 This lack of information on deportations created the impression that it had not played any significant role in the Habsburg Monarchy. The notion of “No Colonies – No Deportations” appeared to be a convenient concept, which, however, in light of documented evidence, is entirely untenable. On the con- trary: the Habsburg empire was an integral part of the European deportation system of the early modern period. The total number of people affected by these schemes in the Habsburg realm surpasses the five-digit range, and thus in the European balance ranks not quite at the top, but definitely in a signifi- cant position.
17 Before engaging in overseas deportations, England experimented with such measures within the framework of its “internal colonialism.” Based on the experience of the forceful removals of Scots and Irish, a regular “Transportation System” was established, which, up to the beginning of the American War of Independence, brought approximately 50.000 convicts as forced labourers to the American colonies. After their loss, Australia became the most prominent destination for British deportees. Among the wide range of literature on this topic, essential basic information can be found in Colin Forster, “Convicts: Unwilling Migrants from Britain and France,” in David Eltis, ed., Coerced and Free Migration: Global Perspectives (Stanford, 2002), 259–291. 18 The Netherlands conducted their experiments with the instrument of deportation pri- marily at the Cape of the Good Hope, in Ceylon, on Java, and especially in the Moluccas. For the latter see Vincent C. Loth, “Pioneers and Perkeniers: The Banda Islands in the 17th century,” Cakalele, 6 (1995), 13–35. 19 My postdoctoral thesis on this subject has been published recently as Stephan Steiner, Rückkehr unerwünscht. Deportationen in der Habsburgermonarchie der Frühen Neuzeit und ihr europäischer Kontext (Vienna, Cologne and Weimar, 2014).
Throughout the course of the eighteenth century, such deportations included the removal of miners, farmers, craftsmen, and artisans who clung to forbidden Protestant beliefs; other religious dissenters, such as the extremely sectarian “Bohemian Deists”; pensioners of Spanish origin, who were a drain on the governement’s pocket; and groups of political insurgents, stubbornly fighting to retain their vouched privileges (the “old rights”) against enlightened bureaucratic reform.20 The overall picture that can be drawn from these cases has the following features: the 18th century was the century of deportations on Habsburg soil. The reasons for it were manifold, the affected groups of people heterogeneous, the locations of the separate events ranged about the entire Habsburg territory. The destinations of these forced migrations were in nearly every case Transylvania or the Banat of Timişoara, both conquered from the Ottoman empire only a few decades before. The Banat in particular was turned into a veritable laboratory for population policies, regional and spatial planning, and also the deployment of penal labour. In view of the conditions prevailing in the early modern era, the number of deportees in the Habsburg empire was considerable and the transports rep- resented great logistic demands, challenging authorities and bureaucracies, and not infrequently bringing them to the edge of total collapse. The efforts to forcibly transform people violently torn from their accustomed life and surroundings into colonists often failed pitifully.
20 Erich Buchinger, Die ‘Landler’ in Siebenbürgen. Vorgeschichte, Durchführung und Ergebnis einerZwangsumsiedlung im 18. Jahrhundert (München, 1980); Stephan Steiner, Reisen ohne Wiederkehr. Die Deportation von Protestanten aus Kärnten 1734–1736 (Vienna and Munich, 2007); Stephan Steiner, “Transmigration. Ansichten einer Zwangsgemeinschaft,” in Rudolf Leeh, Martin Scheutz, and Dietmar Weikl, eds., Geheimprotestantismus und evangelische Kirchen in der Habsburgermonarchie und im Erzstift Salzburg (17./18. Jahrhundert) (Vienna and Munich, 2009), 331–360; Reinhold Joseph Wolny, Die josephinische Toleranz unter besonderer Berücksichtigung ihres geistlichen Wegbereiters Johann Leopold Hay (Munich, 1973); Stephan Steiner, “Der Schwarmgeist der Intoleranz. Deisten und Israeliten im Böhmen des späten 18. Jahrhunderts,” Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religions- und Kirchengeschichte, 102 (2008), 59–79; Rudolf Till, “Die Ansiedlung spanischer Pensionisten von Wien im Banat im Jahre 1736/37,” Wiener Geschichtsblätter, 2/2–3 (1947), 25–31; Agustí Alcoberro, “L’exili austriacista i la Nova Barcelona del Banat de Temesvar: teoria i pràctica,” Boletín de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona, 48 (2002), 93–112; Karl-Peter Krauss, “Deportation und Rückkehr des Hauensteiner Aufständischen Jakob Fridolin Albiez/Deportarea şi reîntoarcerea lui Jakob Fridolin Albiez, răsculat fin Hauenstein,” in Annemarie Roeder, ed., Dan hier ist beser zu leben als in dem Schwaben land. Vom deutschen Südwesten in das Banat und nach Siebenbürgen/Pentru că aici este mai bine de trăit decât în ţara şvabilor. Din sudvestul Germaniei în Banat şi Transilvania (Stuttgart, 2002) 195–216.
Deportation by Water
Although the population transfers described above were characterized by extreme violence executed by state authorities, forced labour nevertheless played only a minor role. This was not the case, however, with the so-called Temesvarer Wasserschub (Deportation by water), executed between 1744 and 1768, which brought deviants of all sorts from Vienna to the Banat of Timişoara.21 Here we find the habit of deportation wedded to the deployment of forced labour in a distant territory. Twice a year, offenders of all kinds were herded onto boats, floating down the Danube River, and were finally tugged to Timişoara. Spanning a duration of a quarter of a century of continuous depor- tation activity, this was the most extended forced migration activity ever on an institutionalised basis in Central Europe. Like many deportation efforts before and after, the Wasserschub started out rather innocently but turned out to be a Hydra that warranted no less than the intense and very personal commitment of an emperor to finally cut off its heads one by one. Strikingly, especially in its early stages, its main target was women. Its activities (or rather hyper-activities) were rooted in of a sort of Viennese vice squad, who under the aegis of Empress Maria Theresa herself formed a Keuschheitskommission (Committee of Chastity)22 whose task was to clean up the streets of the capital by sweeping deviant women away from sight. Giacomo Casanova as an eye-witness to their actions left a vivid report:
Everything in Vienna was splendid, there was much money and much luxury; but there was great hardship for those who were votaries of Venus. Rascals turned spies, who were known as ‘Commissaries for Chastity’,
21 So far the Wasserschub has only been researched twice in depth. See Konrad Schünemann, “Der Wiener oder Temeswarer Wasserschub,” Jahrbuch des Wiener Ungarischen Historischen Instituts, 2 (1932), 199–219 and Steiner, “Rückkehr,” 214–274. 22 So far no documents of such an institution have emerged from the archives, which has led to a debate on whether it existed at all. But since contemporaries such as high ranking officials and ambassadors do mention it in their memoirs and diplomatic correspon- dences, it seems quite reliable that such a committee was working indeed, if not as a down- right agency, then most probably as a loose system of spies. See Otto Christoph Graf von Podewils, Friedrich der Große und Maria Theresia. Diplomatische Berichte, ed., Carl Hinrichs (Berlin, 1937), 114–115; Johann Josef Khevenhüller-Metsch, Aus der Zeit Maria Theresias. Tagebuch des Fürsten, Kaiserlichen Obersthofmeisters 1742–1776. 1745–1749, eds. Rudolf Khevenhüller-Metsch and Hanns Schlitter (Vienna and Leipzig, 1908), 202; Viktor Bibl, Die Wiener Polizei. Eine kulturhistorische Studie (Leipzig, Vienna and New York, 1927), 207.
pitilessly persecuted all pretty girls; the Empress, who had all the virtues, had not the virtue of tolerance in the matter of illegitimate love between a man and a woman. That great and very religious sovereign hated mortal sin in general, and wishing to deserve well of God by extirpating it, she rightly thought that it must be persecuted in detail. So, taking into her royal hands the register of what are called mortal sins, she found that they numbered seven, and she thought she could hedge about six of them, but she considered lechery unforgivable, and it was against lechery that her zeal mustered all its forces and let loose. … ‘My subjects shall be free to find any woman beautiful in whom they see beauty, and women may do whatever they wish to the end of appearing so; let men and women desire one another as much as they please, I cannot prevent it; but I will never tolerate the base act which satisfies that desire and which is nevertheless inseparable from human nature and the cause of the reproduction of the species. Let people marry if they wish to have that pleasure, and let all those perish who wish to procure it for money, and let there be exile in Temesvar for all the miserable women who live on what they suppose they can earn by their charms. I know that Rome is indul- gent in the matter, to prevent, so they say, sodomy and incest and adul- tery; but my climate is different; my Germans don’t have the devil in their bodies like the Italians, who have not, as we have here, the resource of the bottle; in addition, a watch will be kept for licentiousness of any conse- quence, and when I learn that a wife is unfaithful to her husband I will have her locked up too, despite the claim that her husband is her only master. This cannot be admitted in my dominions, for husbands here are too indolent. Fanatical husbands who claim that I dishonor them by pun- ishing their wives may protest as much as they please. Are they not already dishonored ?’ … From this ferocious principle, the product of the only fault which the great Maria Theresa had sub specie recti (‘under the appearance of rectitude’), arose all the injustices and all the violences committed by the murderous ‘Commissaries for Chastity’. At every hour of the day any girl who was walking alone in the streets of Vienna, even to earn an honest living, was seized and haled off to prison. But how could it be known that these girls were going to some man’s house for solace or were looking for some man to solace them? A spy followed them at a distance; the police had five hundred of them in their pay, and they were not in uniform.23
23 Giacomo Casanova, Chevalier de Seingalt, History of My Life, Vol. 3 & 4: Venice – Parma – Ferrara – Paris –Vienna (Baltimore and London, 1997), 222–224.
The activities of these Commissaries of Chastity had grave consequences. In the late summer of 1744, 49 liederliche Weiber (women of ill reputation) were put on boats carrying them down the Danube river straight to the Tisza junction, from where they were towed upstream. This “human cargo” finally unloaded in Timişoara and after spending only 18 months there, due to what- ever reasons, 20 women had died already.24 Losses were constantly replaced by fellow sufferers, who until 1748 filled six more such transports.25 Nevertheles, the local authorities were unable to curb mortality and the central administra- tion in Vienna was quite clear when it referred to prison conditions as “langsambe[r] hinrichtung, […], derer todtsstraff ähnlich”26 (slow kind of exe- cution, similar to the death penalty). After a short pause, the Wasserschub truly gained momentum from 1751 onwards. Now not only women who were suspected of bad conduct in general or prostitution in particular were targets of aggressive policing and punishing strategies, but also beggars, thieves, impostors, poachers, vagrants, Roma, mal- adjusted children, incendiaries and barraters, regardless of their age, health condition or gender. Their most common feature was that they were poor and constituted the lowest strata of society. The size of transports multiplied, 100 to 300 people each was now the customary amount. In this scheme of things, practically anyone who was down and out and/or living on the margins of society could become a victim. None were spared for their position in the life cycle: this fate awaited babies torn from their mothers’ breasts, toddlers, ado- lescents, pregnant women, pathetic, feeble old men – they all could quickly find themselves on the Wasserschub. In many cases Vienna was not their birth place; they hailed from all over the Holy Roman empire, from Brussels and from Ljubljana, from Speyer and from Wrocław, from Bohemia and from Moravia, moreover from Italy, Hungary, Croatia, Slavonia, and of course from the Austrian “Hereditary Lands.”27 One might expect these deportations to be withheld from the knowledge of the general public, but interestingly enough quite the opposite was the case. Newspapers published tidings about transports that had left town
24 Vienna, ÖSTA, HKA, Ältere Banater Akten, Nr. 16, March 1746, fol. 95f. Table. 25 Vienna, ÖSTA, HKA, Ältere Banater Akten, Nr. 16, March 1746, fol. 95–97 Table; Vienna, ÖSTA, HKA, Ältere Banater Akten, Nr. 32, July 1752, fol. 30v–33r “lista deren unter der kayserlich-königlichen landgerichtsverhafftung zu Temesvar befündlich sämbtlichen arrestanten mit Ende Aprilis 1752.” 26 Vienna, ÖSTA, HKA, Ältere Banater Akten, Nr. 16, May 1746, fol. 1–4 File May 1746. 27 This group of countries within the Habsburg empire consisted of Austria above and below the Enns, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Tyrol and a few smaller provinces in the southern and western parts of the realm.
As soon as they reach Timişoara, drumbeats are announcing their arrival to the city. Each and every woman or man can step out then, have a look at them and pick one out, without being asked for any reasons. Only those who are to serve a [regular] sentence are exempted from this procedure and are brought to detention immediately. Those who are not picked out in Timişoara instantaneous, are put on carts and sent to various districts guarded by a band of hussars.29
28 E.g. Wiennerisches Diarium 37 (1765) or Wiennerisches Diarium 41 (1768). 29 Vienna, ÖStA, HHStA (Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv), Habsburg-Lothringisches Familie narchiv (Family Archive of the House Habsburg-Lothringen), Hofreisen (Travels of the Court), Carton 2, fol. 269v–284r. The German original reads as follows: “so bald als sie in Temeswar
Living conditions in the workhouse of Timişoara were miserable and compared to its Viennese counterpart,30 even more primitive. First of all, they were characterized by its location in the casemates of a fortress. Maladies were numerous, in summer and autumn usually more than half of the delinquents were sick. Aggravating this was the circumstance that the authorities did not take heed of the age, the health situation or defects of the deportees. Plain cots without any pillows or blankets served as beds, on which two people had to sleep. Divisions between work space, dining area and place of rest were only rudimentary. A warden reported daily on the behaviour of the inmates, and another keeper, chosen from their own ranks, was in charge of pushing on his fellows, preventing upheavals and punishing them if necessary.31 Extreme acts of violence were reported to the Viennese Hofkammer: groundless torture was practised, one person even died from unknown reasons, but most likely due to heavy, uncontrolled beating by the guards.32 Whereas Empress Maria Theresa regarded the whole procedure as basically an adequate means of individual justice and general deterrence, her son and co-regent Joseph II was shocked about it to such an extent that he even threat- ened his mother with his resignation if things were not to be changed radically. This kind of powerplay between mother and son happened frequently during the years of common reign (1765 to 1780), as often their evaluations, strategies and visions were completely different. In a long and extremely well argued expert opinion from 1768, which might serve as an epitome of enlightened views, he depicted the Wasserschub as an absurd theatre of punishment,
angekommen seynd, wird durch den trommelschlag der gantzen stadt ihre ankunfft angemeldet und kan eine jede frau oder mannsperson hinausgehen, sie alle ansehen und aus allen sich eine auswählen, ohne daß man fraget, zu was oder warum, die noch zu strafzeiten condemnirte allein ausgenommen, welche alsogleich in die arreste geführet werden. Diejenigen, welche nicht gleich zu Temeswar ausgewählet werden, werden auf leiterwägen gesetzet und unter bewachung einiger hussaren in die unterschiedlichen districte verschicket […].” 30 The archival material concerning the Viennese workhouse in the early modern period is sparse. For an overview see Martin Scheutz, “‘Hoc disciplinarium…erexit’: Das Wiener Zucht-, Arbeits- und Strafhaus um l800 – eine Spurensuche,” in Ammerer and Weiß, eds., Strafe, 63–95. 31 Vienna, ÖStA, HKA, Jüngere Banater Akten (Younger Records of the Banat of Timişoara), Nr. 172, fol. 850–863 and 866 File 4. 12. 1762. 32 Vienna, ÖStA, HKA, Jüngere Banater Akten, Nr. 172, fol. 311 File 6. 1. 1759 and fol. 427 File 19. 5. 1759. Between 1752 und 1764 93 cases of torture are on file [Vienna, ÖStA, HKA, Banater Akten in publico-contentiosis (Records of the Banat of Timişoara in publico-contentio- sis), Nr. 61, 1765, fol. 121–156 Digest 11. 2. 1764].
Profits and Losses
Seen in hindsight, the workhouse in the Banat of Timişoara more than others in the Habsburg empire could be viewed as an object lesson for all the intrinsic problems that the system of “modern punishment” confronted: first of all, it poi- gnantly epitomizes the unresolved dichotomy of “purifying” one part of society whilst transforming other parts into a dump for “human trash.” Such an effort is doomed to fail on an overall state-level, especially in the case of the Habsburgs where there were no far away colonies involved to make the return of delin- quents almost impossible. As in a system of communicating vessels the gains here resulted in losses there, while the point balance remained as unpleasant as ever. In the case of the Wasserschub, people were transported over hundreds of kilometres only to discover in the end that the fundamental problems the major- ity of the population had with their conduct had not evaporated on the way. Secondly, the high-flown plans of the authorities in Vienna, which assumed that those convicts should labour in order to not only pay the cost for their detention themselves, but in addition to this even generate profits for the state, were not worth the paper they were written on. What did not work in the imperial capital35 did not do any better in the southeast fringes of the realm. As early as 1746 the head of the provincial government in the Banat, Baron von Engelshofen, called the prison workhouse system “too expensefull and in no way profitable”36 and this assessment did not change over the years, over the course of which again and again heavy deficits were deplored by the
33 Wien, ÖStA, HHStA, Habsburg-Lothringisches Familienarchiv, Hofreisen, Karton 2, fol. 269v–284r. 34 Prostitutes were deported from Vienna beyond this date, this time using a Croatian fort and a Hungarian penitentiary as detention places for the unwanted [Josef Schrank, Die Prostitution in Wien in historischer, administrativer und hygienischer Beziehung. Vol. 1: Die Geschichte der Prostitution in Wien (Wien, 1886), 162]. 35 Detailed cash-based accounting records from the beginning of the 19th century show an enormous imbalance of earnings and expenses (Scheutz, “‘Hoc disciplinarium’,” 82–85). 36 Vienna, ÖStA, HKA, Ältere BA, Nr. 16, March 1746, fol. 88–90 File 30. 3. 1746 and Vienna, ÖStA, HKA, Ältere BA, Nr. 16, March 1746, fol. 91f.
Much worse than the obvious failure of the Wasserschub is the moral harm that had been brought upon colonisation efforts as a whole. The Banat of Timişoara established a bad reputation as an Austrian Cayenne, which acted as a deterrent for much sought after farmer colonists for the country. […] Moreover, the incorrect amalgamation of free colonists and people from the Wasserschub, which preoccupied the mind of more than one civil servant of the monarchy, was a major contributory fault to the premature end of the colonisation work of Maria Theresa.40
37 Two of the many examples can be found in Vienna, ÖStA, HKA, Jüngere BA, Nr. 172, fol. 775 Extract v. 10. 3. 1762 and fol. 766v File 25. 4. 1762. 38 Anton Peter Petri, “Das kaiserliche Banat – Ein merkantilistischer ‘Versuchsgarten’ der Habsburger Monarchie (1716–1778),” Österreichische Begegnung, 6/2 (1966), 21–31. 39 Konrad Schünemann, Österreichs Bevölkerungspolitik unter Maria Theresia (Berlin, 1935), vol. 1, 78. Taking in account additional lists that Schünemann did not use, it seems that his sum total of 3130 people might be set a bit too low. Concerning the numbers in general one has even to consider that more than a few of those delinquents escaped and were recaptured again, but nevertheless always counted as new arrivals. 40 “Viel schlimmer noch als dieser direkte Misserfolg ist die moralische Schädigung, die der Wasserschub über das ganze Impopulationswerk gebracht hat. Das Banat hat sich durch ihn den Ruf eines österreichischen Cayenne erworben, der abschreckend auf die bäuerlichen Kolonisten wirken mußte, die man für das Land anzuwerben strebte. […] Außerdem kam es in den Köpfen mancher Staatsbeamter der Monarchie zu der an sich ganz ungerechtfertig- ten Ideenverbindung von banatischem Kolonisten und banatischer Wasserschubperson, die das vorzeitige Ende des theresianischen Impopulationswerks nicht zum wenigsten
Comparative Aspects of Ottoman and Habsburg Strategies
Instead of examining the Habsburg approaches to deportation and convict labour described above with respect to prevailing systems of forced labour in the European sphere,41 which have a prominent place in this volume, I would rather like to turn attention towards the Ottoman empire as the Habsburg’s immediate neighbour and major antagonist in the southeast. Interestingly enough, for almost 200 years the Ottomans were the ruler in exactly those parts of the Balkans that afterwards became the focus of Habsburg’s deportation pol- icy (Transylvania and the Banat of Timişoara) and they themselves practised coercive population transfers and forced labour to a vast extent. Their sürgün method, especially between the 15th and the 17th century, effectuated massive forced population transfers from Anatolia into the Balkans, and – to a smaller extent – within the Balkans itself as well as from the Balkans to Istanbul and Anatolia.42 Nomadic parts of the population as well as sedentary peasants were equally affected.43 Alongside its penal elements,44 often marked by aggravating constraints such as enforced immobility or coercive labour, sürgün was also
used to settle and develop a region badly ravaged by battle and pillage, or to undermine local authorities and aristocratic cliques in recently con- quered areas. On occasion such steps had more than one aim at the same time. Their common denominator was the transformation of towns and
mitverschuldet hat.” (Schünemann, Bevölkerungspolitik, 88). A question of tremendous interest can only be mentioned here and remains a matter of future research: Did the Wasserschub copy know-how acquired in the course of the transport of free settlers or were the treks of voluntary colonists affected by the doctrines of deportation? 41 Steiner, “Rückkehr” presents a lot of such material. 42 Ömer Lütfi Barkan, “Les déportations comme méthode de peuplement et de colonisation dans l’Empire Ottoman,” Revue de la Faculté des Sciences Économiques de l’Université d’Istanbul, 11 (1949/1950), 67–131; Joseph Hacker, “The Sürgün System and Jewish Society in the Ottoman Empire during the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Centuries,” in Aron Rodrigue, ed., Ottoman and Turkish Jewry. Community and Leadership (Bloomington, 1992), 1–65; Paul Lovell Hooper, “Forced Population Transfers in Early Ottoman Imperial Strategy: a Comparative Approach” (Senior thesis, Princeton University, 2003). 43 Maria Todorova, “The Ottoman Legacy in the Balkans,” in L. Carl Brown, ed., Imperial Legacy. The Ottoman Imprint on the Balkans and the Middle East (New York, 1996), 63. 44 Cyprus, for instance, in the last third of the 16th century got colonized by a group of delin- quent forced settlers from Anatolia, who became offenders because of their disregard of religious rules. Their figures are considered to be somewhere between 24.000 and 40.000 [Jan Asmussen, ‘Wir waren wie Brüder’. Zusammenleben und Konfliktentstehung in ethnisch gemischten Dörfern auf Zypern (Münster, Hamburg and London, 2001), 31].
districts important for the security and economy of the empire from unre- liable cities and outposts into controlled regions of economic utility.45
While the influence of the sürgün practice is quite obvious in the Balkans and might have led to its most wide-ranging consequences there, its most spectacu- lar implementation concerns the resettlement of Constantinople/Istanbul. After its conquest in 1453, construction work there was to a great extent borne by sürgüns (“exiled people”) who had been transferred from many different regions of the empire. Between 1459 and 1475 alone, great numbers of Greeks, Turkmens, Armenians and Jews were deported from Anatolia, Trabzon, the Crimea and the Balkans; in the 1510s, 200 households from Tabriz suffered the same fate. Only shortly after its conquest in 1517, Cairo was in a state of shock, watching notable personalities, artisans and clerks being transported to Istanbul and forced to give a hand in the reconstruction of the city. Many Jews from Cairo, whose expe- rience as construction workers the authorities wanted to make use, were amongst those deportees as well.46 The prospective metropolis is estimated to have grown thereby into 500 more households. Only a few of the deportees were allowed to go on short home leaves and it took until Süleyman I’s accession to power before most of them were granted a return to their original dwellings.47 Ottoman sürgün methods and Habsburg’s deportation practices at first sight do not seem to have very much in common. Just a simple look at the timeline reveals that we are not even talking about contemporaneous phenomena: The points of culmination of sürgün had long passed when the central administra- tion in Vienna only very tentatively started experimenting with such ideas. Nor does the geographical proximity allow us to consider some reasonable impact on each other, for these major contestants for major power in the early modern period were too segregated and entangled in their own strategies. Still, seen from hindsight and with a focus on revealing the features of a long-term practice, a comparison might give us some ideas about what circum- stances make an institution like deportation and convict labour work or trans- form it into a failure instead.
45 Hacker, “Sürgün,” 3. 46 Martin Jacobs, Islamische Geschichte in jüdischen Chroniken. Hebräische Historiographie des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen, 2004) 253; Hacker, “Sürgün,” 24–27. 47 Michael Winter, “The Ottoman occupation,” in Carl F. Petry, ed., The Cambridge History of Egypt. Vol. 1: Islamic Egypt, 640–1517 (Cambridge, New York and Oakleigh, 1998) 506f.; Halil İnalcik, “The Ottoman State: Economy and Society, 1300–1600,” in Halil İnalcik and Donald Quataert, eds., An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire. Bd. 1: 1300–1600 (Cambridge, New York, Port Melbourne, Madrid and Cape Town, 42003), 32.
The most significant common feature is that both Ottoman and Habsburg deportations were phenomena of state and imperial expansion. Expansion is based on two crucial factors: solid bureaucracy and functioning military structures are the key elements for implementing any technique of population transfers. Soon after the Ottomans had left their status as a local principality in northwestern Anatolia and re-established their power after Timur’s attacks, they started their demographic experimentation. What Halil İnalcık has labelled as the “classical age” that followed those infant stages was then deeply marked by shifts of populations within the realm. This background of expan- sion was the exact driving force behind Habsburg deportation efforts as well. After the unsuccessful siege of Vienna in 1683, the Ottomans’ star was in decline and a long process of retreat for this major political player got started. The Habsburgs, on the other hand, gained (and regained) important territories to the east and south. And it took only a few decades until they started experi- menting with deportation and convict labour. Parts of the military border48 and its neighbouring regions, as was the case with the Ottomans earlier, turned into focal points of action. What makes the Ottoman empire truly exceptional in the context of population transfers is its very rational approach towards settlement, using sophisticated and refined incentives and providing future prospectives for the state as well as the deportees. Populating Istanbul with selected groups of sürgüns after the takeover of 1453, for instance, appears as a well-organized effort that totally contrasts with the many ad hoc strategies that European states followed. Although the Habsburgs (and most of the other European states) were admittedly able to shift even large groups of people, they almost always confronted massive problems shortly thereafter. Putting houses at the deportees’ disposal, using their manpower in the most effective and appropri- ate ways, integrating most diverse newcomers into already existing societies – these were the weak spots of a policy that was much more based on discarding unwanted people than making use of their capabilities as potential pioneers. Whilst voluntary emigration more or less worked according to the states’ expectations, many coercive actions were doomed to fail from the very beginning. Although loyalty and a general willingness to fight were similarly achieved in both the Habsburg and the Ottoman empires by privileges such as tax exemptions, the outcomes of forced transfers seem to have been very different according to whether those new settlers were given long-term prospects, as in the Ottoman empire, or just disposed of, as in most of the Habsburg cases.
48 See footnote 8.
The religious schism between Catholic, Orthodox and reformed denomina- tions that did not come to a halt on the peripheries of the Habsburg empire, was only one of the faultlines of a settlement policy based on optimistic assumptions rather than on lucid analyses of the given situation. Another was the widely practised disintegration of families, that was supposed to increase the impact of punishment, but could only prove fatal from the point of view of demographic engineering. Another unresolved problem was the already mentioned illusion of dumping impoverished, deviant and unskilled persons next to the military border, which only transferred a societal problem from one corner of the empire to another without solving it. Moreover the Habsburg bureaucracy still clung to the idea of a depopulated and devastated Transylvania and Banat of Timişoara, when these times were long past and new settlers had to (in many cases quite unsuccessfully) fight against well-established commu- nities, in order to get assigned their pieces of land and income. Given all these circumstances, it is little wonder that the rate of escapes amongst the involun- tary settlers was extremely high. One joke that circulated in Vienna was that the deportees were even quicker in returning to the capital than those commissioners who were in charge of their removal.49 All in all, it seems as if the Ottoman empire had a much greater capacity for integrating even masses of forcefully removed people and coerced workers. Its policies of playing off those groups against the local population without risk- ing a total disruption of regional societies, were strategically and tactically much more advanced than the Habsburg’s attempts, which seem to have been so much based on trial and error.
Conclusions
The 18th century brought about a major shift in the attitudes towards, and the deployment of, convict labour in the Habsburg monarchy. While galley service or fortress construction work became more and more outdated over time, the impact of the prison workhouse system proved immense and persistent. Especially together with the new forces of deportation they fostered high- flying visions of an imperial capital, freed from crime and overt poverty, and of a periphery, serving as a self-sustaining or even profitable reformatory. The Temesvarer Wasserschub was emblematic of these ambitious ideals as well as of their miserable failure. The relocation of deviant and delinquent people
49 Vienna, ÖStA, HHStA, Habsburg-Lothringisches Familienarchiv, Hofreisen, Carton 2, fol. 269v–284r.
50 At least during the period of their expansion, the Ottoman empire had the same view on their Habsburg contesters as being ultimately provincial and not worthy of imitation in any form. 51 Concerning discussions on, and strategies of, deportation in the Habsburg Empire of the 19th century see Ilse Reiter, “Strafkolonien für die Habsburgermonarchie? Zur Deportationsfrage in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts,” in Ulrike Aichhorn and Alfred Rinnerthaler, eds., Scientia iuris et historia. Festschrift für Peter Putzer zum 65. Geburtstag (Egling, 2004), vol. 2, 779–821.
Timothy J. Coates
Forced or convict labour in the Portuguese world has deep roots, being estab- lished on the traditions of Roman law. In this volume, this connection is very clearly described in the opening chapter on Roman law by Groen-Vallinga and Tacoma. The Portuguese use of various forms of forced labour is unusual in its extraordinary durability, flexibility of these systems, and their applicability globally. Forced labour in Portugal began in the high middle ages with the gal- leys and was extended to residence or military service in isolated border towns. During early modern times, its uses and applications grew overseas hand in hand with the empire and were normally tied to military service. During the modern era, convict labour became linked with Portuguese Africa, particularly Angola, until 1932 and was closely supervised by the military. This overview will begin with convict labour during early modern times and then turn to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In providing this sweep- ing view, the reader will clearly note the state’s transformation from abandon- ing undesirables to distant exile locales to the closely monitored incarceration of modern times. In this five hundred year process, convicts were transformed from involuntary soldiers forming part of the early modern military during early modern times to inmates supervised by it in more recent times.
Early Modern Times, 1415–1755
Most of the sources relating to early modern forced labour in the Portuguese World are piecemeal and incidental, yet representative of a larger system. Collections that allow parallel works on the Inquisition, for example, are based on the rich archival holdings of the Holy Office in Portugal, some 40,000 indi- vidual processos (files of defendants). There is no similar collection in Portugal from the state’s courts prior to the great earthquake of 1755. Gone are the legal documents, galley records, the maritime registers, reports from the jails, and other collections that would facilitate a study of early modern convict labour in the Portuguese World. In fact, very little exists in the way of legal documentation for the period from 1755 until after the Napoleonic invasions in
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004285026_007
1 The one exception is a collection held in the national archives in Lisbon (Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo), called the Juízo de Degredados (sentences of exile). In theory, these were the master registers mandated by the overall system that regulated this punishment, outlined in great detail in the legal code published in 1603 by King Phillip III (of Spain, II of Portugal). Although these forty small folios have a wealth of information about some sentenced to exile from the period from 1740 until the 1830’s, they are far from the complete, central registers envisioned by the legislation. What becomes clear when examining that data is that the col- lection largely centres on the civil war years in Portugal (the 1820’s and 1830’s) and is a hit or miss collection for the period before 1810. 2 See Humberto Baquero Moreno, Exilados, Marginais, e Contestátarios na Sociedade Medieval Portuguesa: Estudos da História (Lisboa, 1990).
Table 5.1 Estimated totals of those sentenced to exile in the Portuguese world, 1200–1755.
Period Total Comments Estimated population of portugal in millions
1200 to 1415 10,750 Internal exile to 1200: .9 border towns, 1300: 1.25 average of 50 1400: .9 annually.* 1415 to 1550 10,125 Average of 75 1500: 1.25 annually.** 1550 to 1755 50,000 Previous 1600: 2 estimate.*** 1700: 2
* Estimate based on the number of asylum sites and maximum number allowed in each. Sources: Colin McEvedy and Richard Jones, Atlas of World Population History, Middlesex [uk]: Penguin, 1978. ** Largely to border towns in Portugal and to presidios in North Africa, and São Tomé. *** Estimate from Convicts and Orphans, p. 40.
3 Source: Biblioteca da Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa, reservados, 46-A-9.
4 In the remaining two cases, one crime was not stated and the second man was exiled by order of the Royal Court, for unstated reasons. Source: Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, Madeira, caixa 3, document 26, dated July 17, 1783.
With the exception of military duty (see below), convicts sent to a given locale had little choice but to enter into the local economy. This meant work- ing in the dominant (in some case only) local sector. On the Island of São Tomé, this would have been the slave trade or supervision of slave labour pro- ducing sugar. In coastal Angola, it would have been as intermediaries in the acquisition of slaves or in the sale of (a very limited number of) European goods to Africans, or both activities. The same could be said for those residing on the Cape Verde Islands. In Brazil and most of Portuguese Asia, the situation is much more complex simply because their economies were as well. In most of these places, convicts could have become merchants; we know many became priests because of the numerous complaints along those lines from town officials. Still others were soldiers. In Brazil, convicts also had the possibility of working the land as farmers or sharecroppers, supervising slaves on plantations, mining, or raising cattle. In several specific places, we know that the State’s intent was to make convicts into soldiers when they sent them to military presidios in North or West Africa, Mozambique Island, Diu, Muscat, and similar locations. In the last and best-documented example, we have inter- nal exile within Portugal to Castro Marim. Reserved for minor and mid-range offenders from both secular and inquisitorial courts, convicts and sinners laboured largely in salt production and some limited agrarian labour in Portugal’s Algarve. They were a significant pool of labour for the town and were largely responsible for the town’s ability to produce salt at a competitive price, rivaling other sources (notably Setúbal).5 In all cases, their levels of productivity when compared to the free labour force are unknown due to a lack of documentation. Much of this results from a general lack of supervision; a variety of local officials were responsible for overseeing convicts. Overseas this might have been the military commander (North Africa, Mozambique Island), the governor or local judge (Cape Verde, São Tomé), or even the town council (Luanda). In short, convict labour could and did take many forms but was increasingly associated with military duty whenever possible. In a very general way, the more serious the crime (or sin), the more distant (from the sentencing court), demanding (in terms of labour), or unhealthy (for Europeans) was the place of exile. Crimes tended to be one of three categories: minor (internal exile or perhaps some other nearby locale), major (more distant), and unpardonable
5 On the use of Castro Marim as a place of punishment, see Geraldo Pieroni and Timothy J. Coates, De Couto do Pecado à Vila do Sal, Castro Marim 1550–1850 (Lisboa, 2002). On salt in the Portuguese economy, the classic work is Virginia Rau, Estudos Sobre a História do Sal Português (Lisboa, 1984).
(the most distant).6 Thus a convict sentenced in Lisbon for a minor crime (theft of a small item) might end up in Castro Marim for two or three years. A convict guilty of highway robbery might be sent to Goa (India), and someone guilty of sodomy might be sent to the galleys or Angola. The courts in Bahia (Brazil) might interpret sentences for these same crimes as exile to Pará (northern Brazil) for two years, exile to the Sacramento Colony (modern Uruguay) for five years, and life to Angola. The courts in Goa might sentence minor offenders to Diu or closer, serious offenders to Sri Lanka, and unpardon- able offenders to Mozambique Island or Timor. This general interpretation of three types of crime and distance as punish- ment seems to be accurate throughout the early modern period. The only real exception to this is response to a military crisis, which is a characteristic of the seventeenth century for the Portuguese. This would include a global strug- gle with The Netherlands, a multigenerational war with Spain, and conflicts with the Omanis, as well as too many other smaller powers to mention. In times of crisis, all legislation indicating location and time of exile was set aside and convicts were directed where the State urgently required their mili- tary service. At least in legal theory exile was exclusively for the peasantry. Nevertheless, members of the nobility were exiled from time to time, but convicts with titles were rare. Nobles were spared sentences to the galleys and did not have to wear chains. Ecclesiastical figures were normally sentenced by their own courts. Inquisitorial courts sentenced sinners (peasants) in a manner closely tailored to match the manpower needs of the state. Female convicts, when they appear, were normally sent to Castro Marim or to areas of Portuguese America. The former was one of the mildest punishments available; the latter meant a shorter voyage, a healthier climate, and had a greater demand for European wives than other colonies. Age does not appear to be a deciding factor. Ethnicity was a major factor when the Roma are considered. They alone were singled out by the early mod- ern Portuguese state for exile based exclusively on the use of their language and dress, which did not conform to the rest of Portuguese society. Laws aimed at removing Roma from Portuguese society existed at least until the 1800’s. Most were sent to Angola or Brazil.7
6 This is the terminology the courts used at the time. More familiar legal terms such as first or second-degree murder, felony, and misdemeanor would have to wait until the nineteenth century. 7 See Elisa Maria Lopes da Costa, O povo cigano entre Portugal e terras de além-mar (séculos XVI–XIX) (Lisboa, 1997).
Early modern convicts, when compared with their modern counterparts, enjoyed greater freedom and the ability to make numerous choices. Even before departure from the jail, convicts petitioned to change the location and length of their sentences. For example, a convict sentenced to five years in Cacheu (West Africa) could and did petition the court to send him to fight the Dutch in Brazil in the 1650s. There are numerous examples of individuals who requested and received shifts in their sentences from North African presidios to Castro Marim or other sites within Portugal, with a doubling of the lengths of their sentences (e.g. two years in Ceuta for four in Castro Marim). Once in their locales of exile, convicts had diverse opportunities to earn their livelihoods. In theory, the only restriction placed on them was their mobility; they were not allowed to leave the immediate town and its surround- ing lands.8 They were also not supposed to hold any office (such as with the town council), but in locales with few Europeans, such as São Tomé, this rule was sometimes ignored. Since any sort of meaningful supervision was com- pletely lacking, convicts sometimes left the Portuguese world altogether for greener pastures. On the other hand, once the convict had served his time in the stated locale, he was given a certificate of completion and was free to return to Portugal or relocate, as he desired.9 It is in the list of external factors that we can clearly see the major differences between early modern and modern systems of punishment and labour in the Portuguese case. The famous Jesuit António Vieira noted in the seventeenth century that the Portuguese were born in a small country but the entire world was their grave. So it was for those sentenced to work overseas. External factors were far too numerous to attempt to list, but since military outposts were scattered around the globe, interactions with the local (non- Portuguese) populations were inevitable and (in most cases) highly desirable. Using the same sliding scale noted earlier, external factors would be fewer at the top and numerous at the bottom. The driving reason for this, I would argue, is simple survival. The Portuguese (individually and collectively) were not as dependent on external factors in the city of Goa as they were in Diu or Mozambique Island.
8 In Portuguese law, a town or city (vila, cidade) consisted of its urban centre as well as the lands surrounding it, typically to a distance of several leagues depending on the proximity of other nearby towns. Called the termo, the town and these surrounding lands were the juris- diction of the local court. 9 Such certificates of completion are exceedingly rare. I have only seen two and both were in the Juízo de Degredados collection in the Torre do Tombo in Lisbon.
First-hand sources written by convicts are an unavoidable gap in the early modern literature since convicts were typically illiterate and few left any writ- ten traces of their experiences. One notable exception stands out in this desert: Gabriel Dellon, a French doctor who made some powerful enemies in Goa and was sentenced by the Goan Tribunal of the Inquisition to work in the galleys in Lisbon. He wrote of his experiences in The History of the Inquisition as it is Exercised in Goa.10 This is the only first hand account of forced labour (of which I am aware) in the early modern Portuguese case. Dellon made rope and filled sand bags in the Lisbon naval yard. He does not dwell on this unfortunately, but rather on the injustices practiced by the Inquisition.
The Modern Era, 1755–1932
In terms of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there is a modest and growing literature on crime and punishment in Portugal, spearheaded chiefly by the work of Maria João Vaz.11 A handful of others have contributed as well.12 A parallel (and to date unconnected) rich and very well developed literature exists on Portuguese possessions overseas after Brazilian independence (1822–24), centred on Portuguese Africa. Convict Labor in the Portuguese Empire, 1740–1932 attempts to link these two literatures with each other and with the larger picture of New Imperialism in Africa.13 Portuguese efforts at forced colonization and the use of convict labour con- tinued well after Convicts and Orphans ended in 1755. From that period until 1822, three marginal regions of Brazil (Pará, Maranhão, and Santa Catarina) were singled out to receive convicts from Portugal. Once Brazil became inde- pendent, Portugal experienced a prolonged period of chaos and anarchy caused by the Napoleonic invasions, the subsequent British occupation, the absence of the royal family, and a civil war. This chaos was reflected in the haphazard application of laws regarding exiling and extracting labour from convicts lasting until ca. 1850.
10 London: James Knapton, 1688. 11 See her Crime e Sociedade. Portugal na Segunda Metade do século XIX (Oeiras, 1998); and Maria João Vaz, Eunice Relvas, and Nuno Pinheiro, eds., Exclusão na História. Actas do Colóquio Internacional sobre Exclusão Social (Oeiras, 2000). 12 In particular, see Tiago Pires Marques, Crime e Castigo no liberalismo em Portugal (Lisboa, 2005). 13 Timothy J. Coates, Convict Labor in the Portuguese Empire, 1740–1932. Redefining the Empire with Forced Labor and New Imperialism (Leiden and Boston, 2014).
The Portuguese state (both the Kingdom and after 1910, the Republic) under- went a series of legal reforms that were sweeping across both the United States and Europe. These attempted to rationalize and standardize the punishments for crimes (with a series of new legal codes from 1850 to 1890), reform the pris- oner into a useful member of society, and (in the Portuguese case) allow the convict to redeem him/herself through labour in Portuguese Africa. Unlike much of early modern northern Europe, discussed in Spierenburg’s contribu- tion in this collection, such goals of “civilising” or reforming the convict had been absent in the Portuguese case until the mid-nineteenth century. As is immediately apparent when the older system is placed side by side with the newer, this more modern effort was very ambitious and far-reaching. In the case of the Portuguese State, this reform movement led to the construc- tion of new prisons, notably the Penitentiary of Lisbon following the new penal theories of the day (silence, single cells) to allow for penitence and reflection. These were the immediate goals of the new legal theory and the penitentiary in Lisbon, completed in 1885, was the shining example of enlight- ened legal thought in late nineteenth century Portugal. Here we can see traces of the Philadelphia and Auburn penal systems, as well as the influence of Jeremy Bentham’s penal philosophy, published in Portuguese translations in Lisbon as early as 1822. However, this system had a second component: redemption of the individ- ual through work. Workhouses had been notably absent in Portugal during early modern times, unlike northern Europe. The Portuguese would now move the workhouse overseas. From the period from 1880 to 1932 extracting that labour was the goal of the centrepiece of Portuguese convict labour in Africa: the Depósito de Degredados (Depository of Convicts) in Luanda, Angola. As the name suggests, it was administered by the military and was opened in the early 1880’s, although it had been functioning sporadically before then. It directed the labour of convicts it received from Portugal and all Portugal’s Atlantic colo- nies until it was closed by Salazar’s government in 1932. An identical, but much smaller, prison functioned on Mozambique Island during the same period. It received convicts from Portuguese Asia and some political prisoners from Portugal itself. The legal theory was that the criminal would be held in Lisbon for several years and through solitude and reflection purge himself or herself of the crimi- nal elements within. The newly cleansed convict would then be sent for a pro- longed sentence of labour in one of the African colonies, where redemption would arrive through hard work. Both institutions were necessary, indeed criti- cal, for success, and neither can be understood without the other, unlike other European examples where this link was absent. For example, by the time the
Portuguese had started this in the 1880’s, the British had long ceased sending convicts to Australia and its two modern prisons of Millbank and Pentonville had been operating for more than forty years. This is significant since the Portuguese closely observed both the British and French use of convict labour in their colonial empires. A third institution is of importance in this context is the Lisbon Geographical Society, founded in 1884. Its guiding mission was to spearhead Portuguese colonial occupation in Africa. Several of its members studied the potential of convict labour and colonization. In a sense, the Geographical Society acted as a kind of “think tank.” Its members were highly influential in crafting colonial policies until the end of the First Republic in 1926. Therefore, these three institutions formed a complimentary bundle of inter- locking interests, motives, and objectives. The Lisbon Penitentiary represented legal and social objectives; the Luanda prison reflected legal, economic, and political interests; the Geographical Society studied the use of convict labour and forced colonization as methods to occupy and control Portugal’s two larg- est colonies in Africa. This bundle becomes even more complex when we add the Tropical Studies Institute (Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical) and the Institute for Tropical Medicine (Instituto de Higiene e Medicina Tropical). The former (a state institution founded in 1884) would largely replace the activities of the private Geographical Society by 1926. The Medical Institute (founded ca. 1914) would not directly impact the health of these convicts but would be of vital importance for the Portuguese in Africa. A great deal has been written on Portuguese Africa and, more specifically, Angola during this period. In addition, political and social aspects of nineteenth century Portugal itself have become increasingly popular subjects of study. No one has examined the convict labour of Europeans in Portuguese Africa. The only work that approaches this is Gerald Bender’s path-breaking Angola under the Portuguese. The Myth and the Reality. However, as he makes clear in his title, convict labour is not the focus of his study, although he does include a discussion of its impact in the Angolan colony. This gap is all the more puzzling considering that Angola (in general), and Luanda, and Mozambique Island (in particular) were penal colonies from the mid 1880’s until 1932; virtually every official report and many other works on Angola men- tion the overwhelming presence of convicts in their distinctive dark blue uniforms. In a sense, convicts were the “elephants in the room,” a defining factor in both these colonies, yet a fact no one (including officials in their reports) wanted to discuss at any length. In addition to Bender’s work, one additional printed source deserves special mention. The commander of the Luanda prison was required to submit an annual report to the governor. In 1915
14 Hermenegildo A. de Faria Blanc Junior, O Depósito de Degredados (Loanda, 1916). 15 These consist of over one thousand boxes (in the Torre do Tombo alone) of legal (and religious) materials, packed together with no apparent logic or obvious chronology. Each box contains 1 to 25 files of materials that have no obvious relation to each other. The index for these materials in the Torre do Tombo is extremely rudimentary at best and only gives a suggestion of what each file and box contains. The organization of the materials (hundreds more boxes) in the National Library is also sketchy. 16 It would appear these convicts were motivated by the belief that the new Republic of Portugal would be quicker to pardon them than the previous monarchy, but just the opposite appears to be case. More convicts were pardoned before 1910; few were par- doned by the President after that date. This did not stop them from trying and several sent two or three petitions during the same year. 17 Their materials from the nineteenth century are numerous and organized in parallel, con- fusing systems (e.g. Angola box 110, Angola red box 5, Angola second series box 34). Some boxes of materials have two different numbers from two distinct series for the same box. This confusion is somewhat offset by the computerized list of the materials, allowing a search by keyword. Another source is the lists of convicts arriving in the colonies, pub- lished in the weekly official colonial newspapers. 18 Unfortunately, the materials on the prison and its convicts are not in the section of that archive that has been cataloged or organized. Finding and consulting those materials could easily take a year or longer of research in Luanda.
Table 5.2 Estimated totals of those sentenced to exile in the portuguese world, 1756–1932.
Period Total Comments Estimated population of portugal in millions
1756 to 1822 14,850 Average of 200 1800: 2.75 annually plus internal exile to Castro Marim of 25 annually 1823 to 1883 11,100 Average of 135 1850: 3.5 annually, not including vagrants. Add 50 vagrants per year estimate 1883 to 1932 10,000 and Average of 200 1900: 5 5,000 and 7,500 annually to Angola. 1932: 5.5 or 22,200 Add 100 vagrants per year and 7,500 for convicts sent to other places
Sources: for the population of Portugal, Colin McEvedy and Richard Jones, Atlas of World Population History, Middlesex [uk]: Penguin, 1978. Convict estimates are from Coates, Convict Labor in the Portuguese Empire. foreigners sentenced by courts in Goa and Macau, such as Omani slave traders and Chinese smugglers. The authorities in Angola and Mozambique exchanged their local prisoners, so that no Africans with local connections were held by either facility. The types of convict labour and the objectives of their work in Africa were to extract whatever possible useful labour from these individuals to build the infrastructure in the colony. The 1880’s were the high mark in European New Imperialism in Africa, the scramble for colonies that changed the political map of Africa after the Treaty of Berlin. Convict labour in Portuguese Africa was designed to furnish the “effective occupation” required of the treaty and build the infrastructure of the colony. Prison officials in Luanda experimented with assigning levels to each of the arriving inmates based on his/her behavior. All started at level 2 or “suspicious.”
After 6–12 months at level 2 with no infractions, inmates could be promoted to level 1, “improved.” Bad behavior or breaking prison rules would result in a demotion to level 3, “incorrigible.” In following this system, it is possible to see the influence of the French legal code described in Sanchez’ article in this col- lection. For the male inmates, work was based on a variety of factors but this behavioral level played a critical role. Level 1 inmates (who had been at level 1 for at least a year without any infractions, had served at least 20% of their sen- tences, and who were not recidivists) could be assigned to work for private individuals who posted a bond. Recidivists were also sent to Luanda under laws inspired by the French legal code. These convicts were free to leave the prison and work under direct private supervision. Typically, planters in the interior of the colony (or a citizen in Luanda) might lease a convict under such an arrangement and such a convict might very well serve out his remaining time working on a plantation (or one of the cities), only periodically reporting to the local police station to verify his continued presence in the colony. We do not know what type of work or function the convict performed that an Angolan could not. Was it some skill or perhaps overseeing Angolans at work? Why would an individual go to the trouble and expense of posting a bond and becoming responsible for a convict unless he or she had some special skill that was otherwise unavailable? Others would leave the prison under the watchful eyes of the military (specifically the cavalry) to work in the interior of Angola. How they were selected and what they did remain mysteries, but given the hardships of such duty, it would be safe to say that these were “incorrigibles.” Vagrants were selected for this duty as well, since several military commanders comment on the difficulties of motivating them to work (“ten vagrants did the work of two and ate for twenty”). It is worth noting at this point that the Portuguese military, through it own courts, punished errant members of the military to fixed years of obligatory service in Angola. Thus, civilian con- victs were frequently working under the supervision of military deportees. In this sense, it is possible to clearly see the parallels with the Argentine authorities creation and use of Ushuaia (Patagonia) described by Aguirre and Salvatore in this collection. Male inmates at level two (“suspicious”) worked closer to the prison, only able to leave for the day to work in the city of Luanda. In town, they performed a wide variety of tasks for the state, the city, or the military. A detailed listing in 1901 shows the Depósito and the colony had 993 degre- dados. They were working in a variety of governmental and municipal posi- tions throughout the entire colony. Just to mention a few of the larger examples, fifty-seven were assigned to the troops in Benguela (a coastal city to the south), twenty-four were in the Fortress of São Pedro da Barra (a place of secondary
From time to time, a levy of convicts leaves for Africa to atone for their crimes. Most of them are men who have left the (Lisbon) penitentiary where they have been instructed in a skill that keeps then busy and which they repeat mechanically. Tossed out to the colonies, in poor health, their losses exacerbated by their prison time, they become useless overseas.
19 Annuario Estatistico da Provincia de Angola 1901, table 66.
Figure 5.1 O depósito de degredados em Angola, 1910. Source: First page from “O depósito de degredados em Angola,” Ilustração Portugueza, segunda série, volume 9, Lisboa, 1910: 618–621. Captions: Top left: “Director of the workshops, Second-Lieutenant, José d’Albuquerque.” Top photo at right, “Group of convicts employed in the workshops.” Second photo from top at right, “External view of the carpentry shop.” Third photo from top at right, “Carpentry workshop.” Bottom photo at right, “Workers working outside.”
The presidio, where they no longer conduct their work, together with the climate, smothers them and they forget what they have learned. When they have repaid their debts to society and return to freedom, they are entirely unprepared for their new existence. In punishing them, the law makes them useless. Now, because of the modern methods of the Depósito of the Degredados in Angola, an approach that should continue, the con- victs obtain the skills by which they can be employed. When they leave, they will take these with them, honed by the long practice they have had. The women, who used to pass the days in the sunny patios, unless merchants or the authorities let then out on bail, now have a means by which they can support themselves. It is a skill that employs them and keeps their minds occupied. This gives them moments of peace, since most of them still ponder their crimes. In this aspect, they do not show the ability to change, a particularity of their gender.
All convicts were paid for their labour but the formula differed depending on the task. Those living and working outside the prison were paid by individuals based on the number of days they worked. Convicts living in the prison but working outside it were paid by the state (or its agents). For example, the port authority or national press would be charged for the labour of convicts fur- nished by the prison. The commander or the director of their workshop would pay those living and working within the prison. This was based on a formula using the number of days worked and the profit cleared by the workshop. In the case of female convicts, this was further compounded by different rates of payment for each behavioral level. Nevertheless, in all cases, a number of oblig- atory deductions, notably the repatriation fund, greatly reduced their net pay. Repatriation was funded by several sources, not just the individual convict. In fact, it is easy to see how repatriation alone was a drain on the income of the Depósito. Convicts had to contribute 10% of their salaries, regardless of source. One third of the fees for private licenses for workshops were dedicated to this fund, as was 5% from the sale of all manufactured items. A collection of other fines made up the remainder, including 20% of the labour costs for man- ufactured items. This fund was designed exclusively for passage to Portugal for those who completed their sentences and “who lack other means” to pay for their passage. Given the financial realities of the convicts in Angola, this must have been nearly 100% of those returning.20 Also revealing is which workshops yielded the most activity and gross profit. Tailors and cobblers account for more than three quarters, some 51% and 29%,
20 Regulamento Militar Article 304.
Figure 5.2 Diverse items made at the Depósito, 1915.
21 Junior, O Depósito, 107. 22 Souce for the photo: Junior, O Depósito, 51.
23 In the same manner, in one of the convict narratives from Guiana, the author mentioned that escapees from the French penal system in South America had drifted to all the major cities in South America, especially Caracas, Buenos Aires, and Rio de Janeiro, where they ran bordellos. Famous for the women they brought from France to work in these estab- lishments, in the 1920’s in South America being a “French woman” became synonymous with “prostitute.”
Sending convicts to the overseas provinces and especially to Angola, which should have supplied an element of prosperity, being both [an] established and secure [method], in the course of time, became dead- weight for that province [Angola] continued to support with difficulty. Providing for the convicts in Angola annually cost the treasury two or three thousand contos [two to three million escudos] and transporting them there another several hundred [contos].24
24 Decree 20:877, abolishing the punishment of exile, dated February 13, 1932.
Conclusions
Forced colonization in the Portuguese world (based on Roman law) has its roots in the middle ages and the use of legal havens, largely located along Portugal’s borders. Convicts could escape the consequences of breaking the law if they agreed to reside in one of these havens for an extended period, typi- cally ten years. With the creation of the empire, havens and exile locales at home were phased out (with the exception of Castro Marim) and overseas locales were linked with compulsory military service. This was expanded when the Inquisition dovetailed its sentencing patterns to re-enforce the State’s manpower needs. During the early modern period, at least 50,000 convicts and sinners were forced to relocate (largely overseas) and the vast bulk of these were single men, absorbed into the military. From 1756 to 1883, an additional 26,000 were sent overseas until the creation of a modern penal system in Angola and Mozambique. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen- turies, this loosely structured system was transformed into one with meaning- ful direction and purpose. In a bold experiment and as students of the British in Australia and French in New Caledonia and Guiana, the Portuguese created two prisons in Africa to receive convicts and direct their labour. From the 1880’s until the end of the system in 1932, some 20,000 plus convicts (the vast majority Europeans) toiled in Angola and Mozambique building the colonial infrastruc- ture and supporting the military. This is a most unique experiment using European convict labour in Africa. It did create the colonial infrastructures needed in Angola and Mozambique and that accomplishment should not be overlooked. After the prisons closed in 1932, Portugal began yet another trial using penal labour, this time closer to home. In the 1920’s, the Portuguese State created several agricultural penal colonies outside Lisbon. They were renamed (and presumably their objectives altered) in 1981 and are now simply called “prisons.” What generalizations can be stated at this point about the Portuguese use of convict labour? First, it had an unusually long duration, beginning with the creation of the empire in 1415 (convicts served in the military in the conquest of Ceuta that year) and ending in 1932, some 500 years later. On the other hand, its modern segment was modeled on and paralleled the French use of transported con- victs to New Caledonia and Guiana, only ending with wwii. Second, it was remarkably flexible, especially the early modern segments. Third, during early modern times, it was guided by practical needs trumping any sentences mandated by legal codes. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, sentencing was strictly conducted according to legal codes. These
Hamish Maxwell-Stewart
Introduction
In 2010 unesco inscribed eleven Australian convict sites onto the World Heritage Register. These sites were chosen as illustrative examples of the insti- tutional arrangements put in place to regulate the lives of the 166,000 men, woman and children transported as convicts to the Australian penal colonies between 1787 and 1868. The listing endorsed two arguments put forward by the Australian government. The first was that convict transportation was part and parcel of a wider global mobilisation of unfree labour. Since previous listings had recognised the role that slavery and indenture had played in shaping the modern world, the Commonwealth of Australia argued that it was only proper that similar recognition should be extended to convict transportation. The sec- ond argument was that Australia represented the most important penal desti- nation, both in terms of the number of convicts received, and the range of experiences to which they were subjected. It is true that in the popular imagination Australia is often portrayed as the convict colony par excellence. Thus, many are surprised to hear that Britain transported more convicts than were ever sent to Australia to other destina- tions and that these other flows both pre and post-date transportation to Australia (see Table 6.1). In order to understand Britain’s Antipodean convict experiment it is necessary to chart its Atlantic roots. This chapter will explore the manner in which English (later British) transportation policy used existing mechanisms designed to secure cheap labour for overseas colonial development as a means of putting the bodies of convicted criminals to effective use. By the late eigh- teenth century changes in Atlantic labour markets had forced the British to consider alternative penal destinations, turning eventually to Botany Bay. Transportation to Australia can itself be split into three phases. During the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars it remained small scale. The increase in convictions that followed in the wake of post-war demobilisation necessitated a rethink in the way convict labour was deployed. The resultant reorganisa- tion was designed to supply cheap labour to the private sector. Following
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004285026_008
Table 6.1 Number of convicts transported in the British empire 1615–1937.
Caribbean (Barbados only) 1615–1699 4000 American Colonies 1615–1718 4500 American Colonies 1718–1775 50000 American Colonies 1776–1800 1000 West Africa 1775–1781 1000 Military transports 1790–1820 5000 Mauritius 1815–1853 1500 Bencoolen 1787–1825 4000 Straits Settlements 1790–1860 20000 Tenasserim Provinces 1849–1873 5000 Andaman Islands 1858–1937 70000 New South Wales 1788–1840 80000 Van Diemen’s Land 1803–1853 72000 Port Phillip 1846–1850 3000 Western Australia 1850–1868 9700 Bermuda 1824–1863 9000 Gibraltar 1842–1875 9000 Total 348700
Sources: Hilary Beckles, White Servitude and Black Slavery in Barbados, 1627–1715 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1999), 5–23; C. Herrup, “Punishing Pardon: Some thoughts on the Origins of Penal Transportation,” in Penal Practice and Culture, 1500–1900: Punishing the English, ed. S. Devereaux, (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2004), 120; A.S. Fogelman, “From Slaves, Convicts, and Servants to Free Passengers: The Transformation of Immigration in the Era of the American Revolution,” The Journal of American History, 85, 1 (1998),:43–76; R. Ekirch, Bound for America: The Transportation of British Convicts to the Colonies 1718–1775, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987); B. Reece, The Origins of Irish Convict Transportation to New South Wales (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001); R. Chartrand, British Forces in the West Indies 1793–1815 (London, Osprey, 1996); C. Anderson, Convicts in the Indian Ocean: Transportation from South East Asia to Mauritius, 1815–53 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 6; S. Nicholas and P. Shergold, “Transportation as Global Migration,” in Convict Workers: Reinterpreting Australia’s Past ed. S. Nicholas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1988), 30 and J.L. Gillin, Criminology and Penology, volume 2 (Montana: Kessinger Publishing, 2007), 383.
substantial criticism of a system many regarded as akin to slavery, a series of measures designed to bring transportation in line with metropolitan penal practice were implemented in the years after 1839. These proved to be largely unpopular and transportation to Eastern Australia was abolished in 1853 in the wake of concerted colonial pressure. Convicts continued to be shipped to
Western Australia where there was a labour shortage until this practice was also abandoned in 1868. The chapter will also include a detailed assessment of the process of labour extraction in Van Diemen’s Land, the colony for which the most detailed records survive.
Background
British courts had sentenced convicts to transportation since 1615, the majority being despatched to colonies in the New World. In the words of the original decree, those felons “whoe for strength of bodie or other abilities shall be thought fitt to be ymploied in forraine discoveries” might be spared the gallows on condition of overseas service.1 Few were sent at first. The number of trans- ported felons increased during the Interregnum (1648–60), although records were poorly kept and it is difficult to distinguish between prisoners of war, political exiles and those reprieved from the gallows. Most were sent to the Caribbean to work on tobacco plantations – indeed to be “shipped for the Barbadoes” became a euphemism for transportation.2 By the mid-seventeenth century the connection between exile and forced labour had become firmly entrenched and around 6,000 felons were sold into colonial servitude between 1660 and 1717. In the seventeenth century it was commonplace for convicts to be worked alongside slaves. The shift from tobacco to sugar and coffee production in the Caribbean was accompanied by a preference for African over European bonded labour. While the market for convicts in other American colonies remained buoyant, by the early eighteenth century it was rare for convict and slave labour to be worked together. The majority of the estimated 50,000 felons shipped to the New World between 1718 and 1775 ended up in Virginia and Maryland, where they were employed as artisans, servants and farmhands. While property rights in the body of the convict accrued to the state post- conviction, transportation in its seventeenth and eighteenth century guise
1 Abbot E. Smith, Colonists in Bondage: White Servitude and Colonial Labour in America, 1607–1776 (New York, 1947), 93. See also Don Jordan and Michael Walsh, White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain’s White Slaves in America (New York, 2008), 71. 2 See Carla G. Pestana, The English Atlantic in the Age of Revolution 1640–61 (Cambridge, ma, 2004), 183–189; Margaret Sankey, Jacobite Prisoners of the 1715 Rebellion: Preventing and Punishing Insurrection in Early Hanovarian Britain (Aldershot, 2005), 56; Jamie D. Butler, “British Convicts Shipped to American Colonies,” American Historical Review, 2 (1896), 13–14; Hilary M. Beckles, White Servitude and Black Slavery in Barbados, 1627–1715 (Knoxville, 1999).
3 See David W. Galenson, “British Servants and the Colonial Indenture System in the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of Southern History, 44 (1978), 52–55 and Farley Grubb, “The Auction of Redemptioner Servants, Philadelphia, 1771–1804: An Economic Analysis,” Journal of Economic History, 48 (1988), 596–603. 4 Farley Grubb, “The Transatlantic Market for British Convict Labor,” Journal of Economic History, 60, 1 (2000), 103. 5 Farley Grubb, “The Market Evaluation of Criminality: Evidence from the Auction of British Convict Labor in America, 1767–1775,” American Economic History Review, 91, 1 (2001), 295–304. 6 Grubb, “The Transatlantic Market,” 114–115. 7 Bob Reece, The Origins of Convict Transportation to New South Wales (Basingstoke, 2001). 8 Sharon V. Salinger, To Serve Well and Faithfully: Labor and Indentured Servants in Pennsylvania, 1682–1800 (Cambridge, 1987), 148–165.
9 Charlotte Erickson, “Why did Contract Labour Not Work in the Nineteenth-Century United States,” in Shula Marks, ed., International Labour Migration: Historical Perspectives (London, 1984), 34–49. 10 Morning Post and Daily Advertiser, 6 February 1779. 11 General Advertiser, 12 October 1786. 12 Gerald J. Bender, Angola Under the Portuguese: The Myth and the Reality (London, 1978), 60–93.
13 Alan G.L. Shaw, Convicts and the Colonies (London, 1971), 43. 14 Emma Christopher, A Merciless Place: The Lost Story of Britain’s Convict Disaster in Africa and How it Led to the Settlement of Australia (Sydney, 2010), 201–205, 330. 15 Alan Frost, Botany Bay: The Real Story (Melbourne, 2011), 99–102. 16 Patrick Webb, “Guests of the Crown: Convicts and Liberated Slaves on McCarthy Island, the Gambia,” The Geographical Journal, 160, 2 (1994), 136–142.
The plan was scuppered after a 1785 parliamentary select committee chaired by Lord Beauchamp concluded that it would be tantamount to a death sentence.17 The death rates associated with previous attempts to send convicts to West Africa had certainly been fearful.18 After some prevarication the Committee recommended that convicts be sent instead to Das Voltas bay in South West Africa. A perceived benefit of this proposal was that East Indiaman often sailed light on the passage to the Orient and therefore might be induced to ship convicts on the cheap. The naval sloop Nautilus was despatched to survey the area, but returned in July 1786 with the news that this section of the African coast was barren, frequently fog bound and devoid of a safe anchor- age.19 The news forced an immediate rethink. The government briefly investigated the costs of shipping convicts to India and in 1786 Madagascar was proposed as a possible destination. Neither of these options appear to have been seriously contemplated,20 although there is no technical reason why convicts could not have been sent to a destination in the Indian Ocean. If the East India Company had been willing to acquire the labour of British and Irish convicts, they could have been shipped without breaching monopoly rights. Such an arrangement would merely have mirrored the pre-1775 method of disposing of convicts by transferring property rights in the bodies of felons to shipping contractors. Convict labour, however, was something that India House was not short of – it had plenty of felons who had been convicted in its own courts. The transportation of convicts from the Indian subcontinent had first been mooted in 1773 by the Governor of Bengal, who had recommended sending them to the pepper plantations at Bencoolen in Sumatra. This plan was eventually put into action in 1787, the very year that the First Fleet set sail for Australia. It was a scheme that also coincided with the Company’s decision to abandon slavery. The use of Indian convict labour had many advantages. It could be deployed on infrastructure projects, substituted for plantation labour or used to drive down free labour rates. While convicts were unfree they were technically not slaves. Although, as in the British Atlantic, property rights in the labour power of convicts could be transferred from the state to the private sector, these rights
17 Emma Christopher, “A ‘Disgrace to the Very Colour’: Perceptions of Blackness and Whiteness in the Founding of Sierra Leone and Botany Bay,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 9, 3 (2008) and Webb, “Guests of the Crown,” 136–138. 18 General Advertiser, 12 October 1786 and Mollie Gillen, “The Botany Bay Decision, 1786: Convicts Not Empire,” English Historical Review, 97 (1982), 754. 19 Christopher, Merciless Place, 326–327. 20 Christopher, Merciless Place, 313, 336.
21 Anand Yang, “Indian Convict Workers in South East Asia in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries,” Journal of World History, 14, 2 (2003), 182–191; Clare Anderson, “The Politics of Convict Space: Indian Penal Settlements and the Andaman Islands,” in Carolyn Strange and Alison Bashford, eds., Isolation: Places and Practices of Exclusion, (New York, 2003), 40, and Richard B. Allen, “Suppressing a Nefarious Traffic: Britain and the Abolition of Slave Trading in India and the Western Indian Ocean, 1770–1830,” William and Mary Quarterly, 66 (2009), 873–894. 22 Clare Anderson, Legible Bodies: Race, Criminality and Colonialism in South East (Oxford, 2004), 1–2 and Clare Anderson “‘Weel about and turn about and do jis so, eb’ry time I weel about and jump Jim Crow’: Dancing on the Margins of the Indian Ocean,” in Sameetah Agha and Elizabeth Kolsky, eds., Fringes of Empire: Peoples, Places, and Spaces in Colonial India, (Oxford, 2009), 169–187. 23 Aaron S. Fogelman, “From Slaves, Convicts, and Servants to Free Passengers: The Transformation of Immigration in the Era of the American Revolution,” Journal of American History, 85, 1 (1998), 43–76 and Ged Martin, “Alternatives to Botany Bay,” in Ged Martin, ed., The Founding of Australia: The Arguments about Australia’s Origins (Sydney, 1978), 156–157.
Transportation and Labour Extraction in Early Colonial Australia, 1788–1822
As critics of transportation to Australia pointed out, it was the labour of pris- oners that turned the economy – they ploughed the fields, split the timber, built the roads, minded the flocks and packed the wool that was spun into cloth in the textile mills of northern Britain. This was to extract punishment not according to the principles of justice, but the dictates of the market. When the First Fleet had set sail in 1787 there appears to have been no firm concept of the use to which convict labour would be put. Many amongst the prisoners thought that transportation was punishment enough, and although they had been banished for a term set by a court in the British Isles, they were free to do as they liked while in exile. When they arrived at Cape Town they were confronted with an altogether different society that presented other options for organising labour on a more coercive level. From the earliest days slaves were imported from the Dutch East India Company possessions in the Indian Ocean. Many Cape slaves worked alongside indentured Khoi, the indig- enous people who, as pastoralists, were useful to the expanding settlement. By the late eighteenth century the Khoi had lost their independence, having been subsumed by the advancing frontier and reduced to the status of virtual slaves. Amongst the last of those to resist were a handful who were shipped to Australia as convicts.24 Convicts were also imported into the Cape. They came from places as diverse as Mocha in Yemen and Tidore in the Moluccas, many having been transported for fermenting unrest in the Company’s far-flung possessions.25
24 Leslie C. Duly, “‘Hottentots to Hobart and Sydney’: The Cape Supreme Court’s Use of Transportation, 1828–38,” Australian Journal of Politics and History, 25 (1979), 39–50. 25 Kerry Ward, Networks of Empire: Forced Migration in the Dutch East India Company (Cambridge, 2009) and James C. Armstrong, “The Slaves, 1652–1795,” in R. Elphinck and H. Giliomee, eds., The Shaping of South African Society, 1652–1820, (London: Longman, 1979), 86.
The British in Botany Bay had fewer choices when it came to labour. Although they quickly came into contact with Aboriginal peoples these proved to be very different from the Khoi. They were not pastoralists, despite the Australian Agricultural Company’s best attempts to turn them into minders of sheep, and they showed remarkably little interest in the European concept of labour.26 There were also no slaves, nor any possibility of importing them. At the time the First Fleet set sail British slaving interests were engaged in a rear-guard action against the powerful abolitionist lobby. Indeed Captain Arthur Phillip, who had been given command of the expedition, was careful to insist that the new colony would be run according to the laws of England and not some slave code.27 From the start therefore the convicts formed the only practical supply of labour and Phillip assumed that property rights in their labour were assigned to him as Governor. He referred to them as “servants of the Crown” and treated them as though they were indentured labourers bound to serve for a period of time fixed by the courts in Britain. The arrangement mirrored the seventeenth and eighteenth century prac- tice of selling transported felons as indentured servants in the Caribbean and the American colonies. The language that developed in New South Wales to describe the civil status of convicts betrayed the connexion with the Atlantic experience of transportation. Convicts still under sentence were described as in “servitude” and those that were free as “emancipated” – terms that explicitly aligned convicts with other categories of unfree labour.28 There were other similarities between New South Wales and seventeenth and eighteenth cen- tury America. It was generally the practice to give indentured labourers a pay- ment on emancipation in order to provide them with some means to establish an independent future. In some places this took the form of a block of land. It was hoped that this would help populate Britain’s overseas possessions with what was sometimes referred to as a “stout yeomanry.” Such men and women might best be described as the kind of independent small scale farming class that could answer the call to arms should the occasion arise. There were additional advantages, landed people have for long been consid- ered safe. A block of land gave a person a stake in the future, whereas a landless
26 John Connor, The Australian Frontier Wars 1788–1838 (Sydney, 2002), 22–34 and Damaris Bairstow, A Million Pounds: A Million Acres: The Pioneer Settlement of the Australian Agricultural Company (Cremorne, 2003), 70, 84–85, 88–89 and 144–145. 27 Cassandra Pybus, Black Founders: The Unknown Story of Australia’s First Black Settlers (Sydney, 2006), 74 and 112–114. 28 Alan Atkinson, “The Free-Born Englishman Transported: Convict Rights as a Measure of Eighteenth-Century Empire,” Past and Present, 144 (1994), 109–110.
29 A. Roger Ekirch, Bound for America: The Transportation of British Convicts to the Colonies, 1718–1775 (Oxford, 1990), 134. 30 Alan Atkinson, “The Free-Born Englishman Transported: Convict Rights as a Measure of Eighteenth-Century Empire,” Past and Present, 144 (1994), 101. 31 Barry Dyster, “Public Employment and Assignment to Private Masters, 1788–1821,” in Stephen Nicholas, ed., Convict Workers: Reinterpreting Australia’s Past (Cambridge, 1988), 128–130 and Brian H. Fletcher, Landed Enterprise and Penal Society (Sydney, 1976), 64. 32 Grace Karskens, The Rocks: Every Day Life in Early Sydney (Melbourne, 1988), 167.
The early governors had all been naval men. They looked out to sea – trying their best to limit the growth of the tiny settlement under their control. Their remit was to maintain the British enclave at Sydney Cove as a small outpost where ships could be overhauled and refitted on the model of the Dutch East India Company station at Cape Town.33 The New South Wales Corps officers in particular had other ideas. Australia was far more than just a posting for them – the place represented their future. They saw themselves as the elite of a new colony and actively attempted to foster its growth. In contrast to their naval masters, they looked inwards attracted by the pros- pects of large acreages and the potential riches of a new continent. They also allocated sizeable tracts of crown land to themselves although they were careful to provide grants to others too since they calculated that this would make any attempt to reverse their actions both administratively and politi- cally difficult. As the practice of assignment expanded many convicts were distributed to colonial farms and, as in urban areas, they tended to blend in with the colonial lower orders. On small farms run by emancipists it was notoriously difficult to tell the difference between convicts and their masters. They worked along side each other, ate at the same table and dressed in the universal garb of the colo- nial lower orders – the kangaroo skin jacket.34 They were also often paid. In an economy where there was an acute shortage of cash, such payments were usu- ally made in kind. It was thus common for shepherds to be paid a third of the increase in the flock – and thus to acquire the means to support them- selves. In this society it was not uncommon for convicts still under sentence to own property and even run businesses. Some became wealthy long before they were emancipated.35 All of this started to change in the aftermath of Wellington’s victory at Waterloo. When the Napoleonic Wars came to a close the army and the navy were drastically reduced with similar effects to those that had accompanied the end of the American Revolutionary War. The scale of the demobilisation sent shock waves through the British economy. As competition increased for
33 Angus McGillivery, “Convict Settlers, Seaman’s Greens, and Imperial Designs at Port Jackson: A Maritime Perspective of British Settler Agriculture,” Agricultural History, 78, 3 (2004), 261–288. 34 James Dixon, Narrative of a Voyage to New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land (Hobart, 1984), 85 and Karskens, The Rocks, 143–170. 35 See for example Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, “Land of Sorrow, Land of Honey,” in Peter Elias and Ann Elias, eds., A Few from Afar: Jewish Lives in Tasmania from 1804 (Hobart, 2003), 13–20.
7000 the British Empire (1834) WA 7) ) 78 70 5250 (1868) volution Breaks out (1 volution Breaks First Convicts to WA Last Convicts to VDL (1853) Last Convicts to Re
3500 First Fleet to NSW (1 First Fleet to NSW ansported each year American ansportation Act (1717) Tr Last Convicts to First Convicts to (1803) 1750
Transportation (18 Last Convicts to Gibraltar Number tr to New South Wales ceases (1840) 0
1660 1670 1680 1690 1700 1710 1720 1730 1740 1750 1760 1770 1780 1790 1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850 1860 1870
Figure 6.1 No. of convicts transported from Britain and Ireland 1660–1870.
36 Douglas Hay, “Crime and Justice in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century England,” Crime and Justice, 2 (1980), 64–65. 37 J.M. Bennett, “Bigge, John Thomas (1780–1843),” in Douglas Pike, ed., Australian Dictionary of Biography, 1, (London, 1968), 99. 38 Hay, “Crime and Justice,” 55.
39 Edward Curr, An Account of the Colony of Van Diemen’s Land Principally Designed for the Use of Emigrants (Hobart, 1967), 14–15 and Alan Atkinson, The Europeans in Australia: A History, 2 (Oxford, 2004), 16. 40 Barry Higman, Slave Populations of the British Caribbean 1807–1834 (Jamaica, 1995), 59–62. 41 The Times, 18 January 1822 and 12 September 1823. 42 John Ritchie, The Evidence to the Bigge Reports: New Wales under Governor Macquarie, 2 (Melbourne, 1971), 44. 43 A. McKay, “The Assignment System of Convict Labour in Van Diemen’s Land, 1824–1842,” M.A. Thesis, University of Tasmania (1959), 42.
Convict Labour Extraction in Australia Post-1822
Before Bigge tabled his three reports before the British Parliament the Australian colonies had started to change. The publication of a series of emi- grants’ guides, several of which were advertised for sale in The Times, encour- aged free migration. From November 1818 onwards the same paper carried regular advertisements for passages to Van Diemen’s Land and New South Wales.44 Many of the guides described how large parts of the interior resem- bled a gentleman’s park needing little to complete the illusion other than the addition of fine houses and flocks of sheep.45 The arrival of increasing num- bers of migrants with capital spelt an end to the untidy flocks of Persian fat tailed sheep that had been run by emancipist farmers. They were replaced by improved breeds noted more for their wool than their eating qualities. By the mid 1820s cloth manufactured from wool exported from the Australian colo- nies had achieved a high reputation. It was said to have the “felting qualities of Portuguese wools combined with the softness of Saxon.”46 By the late 1820s a string of stone-built fine houses had been erected with ornamental gardens and carriageways at the front and service quarters, farm buildings and male convict barracks around the back.
44 William C. Wentworth, A Statistical, Historical, and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales, and Its Dependent Settlements on Van Diemen’s Land (London, 1819); Charles Jeffrey, Geographical and Descriptive Delineations of the Island of Van Diemen’s Land (London, 1820); William Kingdom, An Abstract of all the Most Useful Information Relative to the United States of America, and the British Colonies of Canada, The Cape of Good Hope, New South Wales, and Van Diemen’s Land (London, 1820); Thomas Goodwin, A Descriptive Account of Van Diemen’s Island (London, 1821); James Dixon, A Voyage to New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land (London, 1822); George W. Evans, A Geographical, Historical and Topographical Description of Van Diemen’s Land with Important Hints to Emigrants (London, 1822) and The Times, 26 October 1819, 8 March 1822. 45 The Times, 30 December 1823, 28 September 1825 and 4 April 1827. 46 The Times, 28 April 1825.
The Bigge’s report cut off the convict’s route to independence. It ensured that henceforth the end of one sentence would merely mark the start of a sec- ond as the convict passed into the ranks of the colonially waged as opposed to becoming a small-holder. The “assignment era,” as the post-Bigge order was described, was geared not just to extract labour from prisoners while they were still under sentence, but also to train them to be a dutiful worker for life. The reformed convict, in this sense, was a man who kept a “still tongue in his head” and did what he was told. The only reward for years of service as a pris- oner would be the ability to earn a wage and freedom from the coercive control of the Convict Department under whose rules he could be flogged for the smallest disagreement with his master.47 Indeed the 1824 Transportation Act attempted to cement private property rights in convict labour, providing masters with the legal right to hire out the labour of prisoners that had been assigned to them or even to sell them onto third parties for profit. It was as though masters had title in their assigned ser- vants in the same way as they held title over the land that had been granted to them. Certainly a strict interpretation of the Act was that it cut across the gov- ernor’s right to recall assigned servants, or pardon them before the termination of their sentence without compensation. It is perhaps not surprising that it was never fully enforced in the colonies where the Act became a matter of political and legal controversy. Nevertheless the legislation provided a vivid demonstration of the extent to which the British government thought that security in property rights in convict labour formed a crucial underpinning to colonial economic success. The convict, anchored in place by the threat of the lash, provided the neces- sary cheap labour to ensure that capital invested in New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land was likely to yield returns. It was thus no accident that convict legal freedoms declined steadily in the 1820s and 30s at a time when their labour was seen as crucial for transforming the colonial economy.48 Their rights and freedoms were curtailed in other ways too. Increasingly the hours that they worked were regulated and opportunities to earn money limited. Following the completion of Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney in 1819 it became the norm for public works prisoners to be housed behind government walls at night.49
47 R.W. Connell and T.H. Irving, Class Structure in Australian History (Melbourne, 1980), 33–34 and 51–53. 48 Bruce Kercher, “Perish or Prosper: The Law and Convict Transportation in the British Empire, 1700–1850,” Law and History Review, 21, 3 (2003), 484. 49 William M. Robbins, “Spatial Escape and the Hyde Park Barracks,” Journal of Australian Colonial History, 7. (2005), 81–96.
The system of passes was tightened up, regulating travel from one place to another, and the colonies were divided into police districts each complete with its own magistrates’ bench. The latter were empowered to punish prisoners for infraction of the rules and regulations governing convict labour. Indeed, Chief Justice Forbes in New South Wales thought that for all intents and purposes assigned convicts were slaves.50 Others agreed – George Arthur (Governor of Van Diemen’s Land 1824–36) said as much to every prisoner who arrived. Part of the ritual of the colony was that after convicts had been disembarked they were addressed by the governor in the yard of the prison barracks in Hobart Town. The whole shipload was told that they would now find them- selves in a degraded state – one that, as they would discover, could be com- pared to slavery.51 Arthur later repeated the claim before a British parliamentary committee. When asked to describe how the convict’s condition related to that of the slave, he replied that it differed in no respect “except that the master cannot apply corporeal punishment” (this could only be inflicted following a magistrates’ bench) and had “property in him for a limited period.”52 It was an assessment that Arthur was well placed to make. He had formerly been Superintendent of British Honduras, a place where slave labour was used to procure mahogany. As with slavery, the chains that held the convict in place were largely ideo- logical rather than physical. The very fact that all prisoners had been convicted of breaking either the criminal law or the Articles of War was used to justify the levels of exploitation to which they were subjected. Any attempt by the pris- oner to challenge their condition merely confirmed that they were at best ungrateful, and at worst wicked and depraved. It was a point underscored by the damning lines that could be entered against their name in the register of offences kept in the superintendent of convicts office.53 The “black books” were the centre-piece of the post-Bigge convict system. They had initially been created under Macquarie’s administration (1810–21) but were later reorganised. In Van Diemen’s Land, Lieutenant Governor George Arthur employed Edward Cook, a transported law stationer, to reorganise the
50 Kercher, “Perish or Prosper,” 573–574. 51 James Backhouse, A Narrative of a Visit to the Australian Colonies (London, 1843), 19. 52 Patricia Ratcliff, The Usefulness of John West: Dissent and Difference in the Australian Colonies (Launceston, 2003), 359. 53 Amanda Laugesen, “The Politics of Language in Convict Australia, 1788–1850,” Journal of Australian Colonial History, 4, 1 (2002), 26; John Hirst, Convict Society and Its Enemies (Sydney, 1983), 107 and 153; Michael Sturma, Vice in a Vicious Society: Crime and Convicts in Mid-Nineteenth Century New South Wales (St. Lucia, 1983), 30.
54 Eustace Fitzsymonds, ed., Mortmain (Hobart, 1977), 1–3.
Table 6.2 Conduct record sample sizes.
Record Series No of Convicts Date range of entries No of entries*
Con 31 and 32 – Male 1283 1814–1879 11089 convicts arriving in the assignment period 1807–1840 Con 33 – Male convicts 1124 1840–1888 9661 arriving in the probation period 1840–1853 Con 37 – Male convicts 140 1826–1882 1040 locally convicted or arriving on minor ships
Records were drawn for all convicts with police numbers ending with the digits 06, 33, 56 and 83. The sampling technique thus captured 4 in every 100 convicts landed in Van Diemen’s Land. While the black books were designed to record rates of colonial recidivism they inadvertently captured data on the society that depended upon the labours of the convict. They are a reminder that crime is socially constructed.55 Indeed 55 percent of all charges laid against convicts were for status offences – that is for offences that a free person could not be charged with committing (see Table 6.3). A further three percent were for “suspicion” of committing an offence – a charge that was unlikely to be laid against a free person. The flexibility with which the law was applied to convict offenders also extended to the disposal of defendants. Thus Joseph Balls was charged with “Suspicion of having Feloniously & maliciously set fire to a stack of hay & 2 Stacks of Straw the prop[ert]y of his Master” while assigned to W.E. Lawrence. While the magistrate found that the evidence was not strong enough to secure a conviction he nevertheless remarked that there were “strong grounds” for believing that Balls was responsible for the incendiary. He therefore recom- mended that he be returned to the Government and relocated to Port Arthur penal station on probation for two years – a decision subsequently approved
55 See for example Reece Walters, “The State, Knowledge Production and Criminology,” in R. Coleman, J. Sim, S. Tombs and D. Whyte, eds., State, Power, Crime (London, 2009), 200–213.
Table 6.3 Charges brought against male convicts.
Offence Percentage
Movement offences (absent without leave or absconding) 22 Other breach of rules and regulations 35 Suspicion of committing an offence 3 Drink related offences 18 Disorderly or violent conduct 9 Theft, fraud and receiving 8 Other 5
Based on an examination of 21,790 entries listed for a systematic sample of 2540 conduct book entries for male convicts arriving in Van Diemen’s Land 1816–1853. taho, Con 31, 32, 33, 37. by the Governor.56 As Balls found out, because he was already a prisoner, he could effectively be incarcerated without trial. Many of the remaining offences for which convicts were charged were rela- tively trivial. Thus, while eight percent of all charges were for theft, fraud and receiving, these included many for “trafficking.” When Charles Lane was charged at Port Arthur with endeavouring to traffic, for example, his sentence to the penal station was extended by 3 months “some Soap having been found near his place of work.”57 Other prisoners were punished for trading or swap- ping their slop clothing. Such charges reflect convict departments concerns, not so much with the theft of government property, but the threat such activi- ties posed in relation to security. Most slop clothing was stamped with issue numbers aiding the identification of public sector convicts. There are some noticeable trends in the data. If the offences for which con- victs were charged are reassembled according to the skills they brought to Australia it is possible to discern that a clerk was three times less likely to be flogged than a weaver (see Table 6.4). Over the course of his sentence a carpen- ter received on average 19 strokes of the lash (or just under two per year served), whereas weavers and cotton spinners got nearly 60 (4.5 per year served). The difference in the degree of judicial punishment they received reflected the fact that carpenters and clerks were much in demand. Indeed fewer men with these
56 2133 Joseph Balls, per Metcalfe, 21 December 1838, Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office (henceforth taho) Con 31/5. 57 256 Charles Lane, per Elizabeth and Henrietta, 4 February 1837, taho Con 31/27.
Table 6.4 Lashes received per male convict.
Mean No. of lashes Mean No. of lashes No. of convicts received per year served in sample
White collar 15 1.55 14 Workers in wood 18 1.97 48 Agricultural 28 2.63 231 Food and drink 33 2.87 40 Metal workers 33 3.36 46 Construction 35 3.60 55 Marine transport 47 4.13 33 Land transport 45 4.33 51 Textile workers 58 4.49 36 Unskilled 46 4.80 192 skills were transported than there were colonial positions for them to fill. As a result they were on the whole well treated. This was particularly true for those who were assigned. Advice commonly given to settlers thinking of migrating to the distant penal colony was that it was far better to reward assigned servants for good behaviour than it was to punish them for bad.58 This was particularly the case for those with useful skills. A trip to the magistrates’ bench could result in a valued convict being sent to a road party, or worse still penal station, and there was no guarantee that the replacement would be a man who was half as useful. By contrast far more tailors were transported than there were jobs available. As a result they were given tasks such as clearing stones off fields or grubbing out the stumps of trees. This was work that required little beyond raw muscle power. If a poorly skilled prisoner’s services were lost to the chain gang then little damage was done – an application could simply be made for a replace- ment. This is why agricultural labourers received on average 28 strokes of the lash per man (2.6 per year served) over the course of their sentence while com- mon labourers, with little or no experience of shearing or handling draught animals, were awarded 45 (4.8 per year served).59 In the bottom three tiers of this system prisoners were routinely worked in gangs under the constant supervision of an overseer. It was the overseer’s job
58 Shaw, Convicts and Colonies, 220. 59 Based on an analysis of floggings received by a sample of 1 in 25 male convicts arriving in Van Diemen’s Land in the period 1816–1840, sources, taho Con 18, 23, 31 and 32 series.
Free
Ticket Ticket
Assigned Assigned
Public Works Public Works
Road Party Road gang
Chain Gang Chain Gang
Penal Station Penal Station
0 0.375 0.751.125 1.5 015304560
AcquittedReprimanded
Figure 6.2 No. of charges brought per convict per year (males) and Distribution of acquittals and reprimands (males).
60 Based on an analysis of 2924 offences for which a sample of 1 in 25 assigned servants were charged with in the period 1817–39. Source: taho Con 31 and 32.
61 Johan Fourie and Dieter von Fintel, “The Dynamics of Inequality in a Newly Settled, Pre-industrial Society: The Case of the Cape Colony,” Cliometrica, 4, 3 (2010), 239.
3.00 10.0
2.25 7.5
1.50 5.0
0.75 2.5 . of lashes per man year . of cells per man year days No No
0 0 18171820182318261829 1832 1835 1838 1841 1844 1847 1850 1853 Cells Lashes Figure 6.3 No. of lashes awarded per convict and days solitary confinement (males).
While this shift illustrates the extent to which punishments focussed on the body were replaced by those focussed on the mind, we should note that sen- tences to hard labour increased over the transportation era as a whole. Thus, despite the greater resort to confinement, punishment remained both physical in nature and firmly centred on labour extraction. Just as punishment strategies changed, however, so did conviction rates. The number of charges brought per man on strength rose dramatically in the 1830s, before dropping back in the early 1840s. After 1843 the trend reversed, before the rate at which convicts were charged flattened out again in the 1850s (see Fig. 6.4). It seems unlikely that such pronounced fluctuations were caused by differences in the composition of the convict labour force. It is difficult to maintain, for example, that a worse type of convict was transported in the mid to late 1830s compared to the 1820s and 1840s. What is noticeable, however, is the extent to which variations in punishment rates are inversely correlated with free wages. In other words, the cheaper a convict was to replace with a free worker the less the bargaining power of the prisoner and the greater the incentive of the master to risk an encounter with the bench. As it turns out, punishment rates for convicts did not just fluctuate with skill, they were also influenced by other long-term trends.
Introduction of probation 0.900 12.00
0.675 9.75
0.450 7.50
5.25 Charges per man on strength 0.225 ges of mechanics (shillings per days) Wa
0 3.00
1818 1820 1822 1824 1826 1828 1830 1832 1834 1836 1838 1840 1842 1844 1846 1848 1850 1852 1854 1856 1858
Charges per man Wages of free mechanics
Figure 6.4 Charges brought against male convicts per man on strength (5 year moving average) and mechanics’ wages.
As Oxley and Meredith have shown, the cost of maintaining a convict in the private sector varied according to fluctuations in the price of the goods that made up the ration. The annual cost of feeding a private sector convict ranged from a high of £36.29 in 1839 to a low of £7.63 in 1843.62 This represents a 475 percent decline in food costs in just four years. It is perhaps not surprising that such factors influenced sentencing policy. The number of days per year convicts were sentenced to hard labour on the roads rose and fell in line with the cost of maintaining prisoners in the private sector. It is difficult not to conclude that magistrates colluded with masters during years when the cost of labour was high in an attempt to shift the burden onto the state. Such strate- gies impacted upon convict bodies. The increased burden of hard labour and the effects of barrack room accommodation (the latter almost certainly increased infection rates) can be measured in elevated morality (see Fig. 6.5). Perhaps this is an appropriate point to remind ourselves that court records are a poor proxy for the number of offences actually committed. Many offences undoubtedly went undetected. As we have seen, on other occasions masters
62 David Meredith and Debora Oxley, “Contracting Convicts: The Convict Labour Market in Van Diemen’s Land 1840–1857,” Australian Economic History Review, 45, 1 (2005), 60–69.
(a) (b) 60 14 £40
45 12.5 £30
30 9 £20
15 7.5 £10 ys labour per man on strength year
Da 0 4 £0
1816 1818 1820 1822 1824 1826 1828 1830 1832 1834 1836 1838 1840 1842 1844 1846 1848 1850 1852 1854 1856 1858 Road party (days per man) Chain gang (days per man) Male deaths (per 1000 per year) Rationing costs (a) Male convict deaths per 1000 per year (b) Costs of rationing a convict for one year
Figure 6.5 Days spent in road parties or chain gang per year per man on strength (3 year moving average). may have been aware of offending behaviour, but decided not to prosecute. While extra-judicial punishments were theoretically illegal there is evidence that incentive stoppages and other forms of informal sanction were often applied. Such practices appear to have been more commonly applied to con- victs in assignment and holding tickets of leave however.
The Ending of Transportation from the British Isles
Under the assignment system the number of convicts transported to New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land peaked in 1833 when nearly 7000 were landed on the “fatal shore” in a single year. Thereafter the numbers were wound back as transportation came under sustained attack, first from critics in the British Isles and later from a colonially based anti-transportation movement. The election in 1830 of the first wholly Whig government since 1783 marked a substantial shift in government policy. The Whigs were in favour of assisted migration, sympathetic to the penal reform movement and avowed opponents of slavery. The supporters of all three causes viewed transportation as, at best, problematic. In their view the presence of convicts made it difficult to promote the Australian colonies as a suitable destination for free working class immi- grants. The assignment system was at odds with the principles of the peniten- tiary with its emphasis on non-physical punishment and there was more than
63 Kirsty Reid, Gender, Crime and Empire: Convicts, Settlers and the State in Early Colonial Australia (Manchester, 2006), 161–196. 64 The length of time served by each probationer varied according to the length of the sen- tence imposed upon them by a British and Irish court – an attempt to ensure that convicts were punished according to what they had done rather than according to the utility of the skills they possessed. See Ian Brand, The Convict Probation System, Van Diemen’s Land 1839–1854 (Hobart, 1990). 65 For a fuller discussion of these issues see Kirsten McKenzie, Scandal in the Colonies: Sydney and Cape Town 1820–1850 (Carlton, 2004) and Reid, Gender, Crime and Empire, 204–246.
Conclusion
British convict transportation policy was modelled on indentured service and, while unfreedom was limited to the term of a sentence and could not be trans- ferred to the children of convicts, it was historically recognised as a labour sys- tem that bore many similarities to slavery. As with slavery, transportation relied
66 Michael Quinlin, “Trade Unionism and Industrial Action in Tasmania 1830–1850,” Tasmanian Historical Research Association, 3, 1 (1986), 12. 67 House of Commons, “Correspondence Returns and Other Papers Relating to Transportation and Secondary Punishments With Appendices 1810–41,” British Parliamentary Papers, vol. 6 (Shannon, 1970), 156–157; “Report of the Comptroller, Reports and Correspondence Relating to Convict Discipline and Transportation 1856–9,” British Parliamentary Papers, Vol. 14 (Shannon, Irish University Press, 1970), 11; “Report of the Comptroller, Reports and Papers Relating to Convict Establishments and to Convict Discipline and Transportation 1860–64,” British Parliamentary Papers, Vol. 14 (Shannon, Irish University Press, 1970), 162–623, 295, 463, 630–631; “Reports from Commissioners, No. 11 Number of Convicts remaining in the Different Convict Prisons on the 31st December of each of the Years 1869–1876,” British Parliamentary Papers, Vol. 45 (1877), xxiii and House of Lords, “Accounts and Papers,” British Parliamentary Papers, Vol. 7 (1847), 195.
∵
chapter 7 Labouring for the Raj: Convict Work Regimes in Colonial India, 1836–1939
David Arnold
In any critical appraisal of the purpose, nature, and context of convict labour, and of its place in global history, India under colonial rule merits close consid- eration. By the end of the nineteenth century British India had one of the larg- est convict populations anywhere in the world, with over half a million prisoners confined in its jails.1 Apart from the old and infirm and those serving short sentences of less than a year (and even they might not be entirely exempt), all prisoners were expected to work. The use of convicts as a source of labour may have been virtually unknown in pre-colonial times, but under the British an obligation to labour became, in both practical and ideological terms, a car- dinal feature of the new penal regime, a central part of the policy that sought to transform criminals into “loyal, orderly, and governable subjects.”2 Even though the rationale for convict work regimes in India broadly followed metro- politan precedent and shared much in common with penal practices elsewhere in the colonial world, over its long history Britain’s Indian empire evolved a distinctive and highly differentiated prison system of its own. While the use of prisoners as “convict workers” highlighted their economic utility,3 from the 1830s onwards material considerations always mingled (at least in the minds of penal reformers and administrators) with a sense of the moral value of labour and with the pragmatism involved in the colonial management of caste, race, gender, health, and religion. Over the course of the nineteenth and early twen- tieth centuries convict labour in India was called upon to serve several, often seemingly irreconcilable, purposes – as a deterrent to wrongdoers, as an instru- ment of discipline and punishment within the prison, as an incentive to prisoners’ reform and rehabilitation, as a means of rewarding good behaviour,
1 In 1891 the average daily prison population in India (including British Burma) was 576,670: Mary Frances Billington, Woman in India (1895), (New Delhi, 1973), 240. This figure excludes prisoners held in the jails of India’s princely states. 2 Satadru Sen, “Policing the Savage: Segregation, Labor and State Medicine in the Andamans,” Journal of Asian Studies, 58 (1999), 753. 3 On the use of the term “convict worker,” see Anand A. Yang, “Indian Convict Workers in Southeast Asia in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries,” Journal of World History, 14 (2003), 181–184.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004285026_009
Extramural Labour
From the first emergence of the colonial prison regime in the latter half of the eighteenth century until the publication of the highly influential report of
4 Cf. Taylor C. Sherman, “Tensions of Colonial Punishment: Perspectives on Recent Developments in the Study of Coercive Networks in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean,” History Compass, 7 (2009), 659–677. 5 Yang, “Indian Convict Workers”; Clare Anderson, “Convicts and Coolies: Rethinking Indentured Labour in the Nineteenth Century,” Slavery and Abolition, 30 (2009), 93–109. 6 Satadru Sen, Disciplining Punishment: Colonialism and Convict Society in the Andaman Islands (New Delhi, 2000); Aparna Vaidik, Imperial Andamans: Colonial Encounter and Island History (Basingstoke, 2010); Clare Anderson, Subaltern Lives: Biographies of Colonialism in the Indian Ocean World, 1790–1920 (Cambridge, 2012).
7 Gyan Prakash, Bonded Histories: Genealogies of Labor Servitude in Colonial India (Cambridge, 1990). 8 Jean Deloche, Transport and Communications in India Prior to Steam Locomotion: Volume 1: Land Transport (Delhi, 1993), 36–44. 9 On this ‘emancipation’, see Dharma Kumar, Land and Caste in South India: Agricultural Labour in Madras Presidency in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1965), Chap. 5. For the difficulties of labour recruitment for railroad construction, see Ian J. Kerr, Building the Railways of the Raj, 1850–1900 (Delhi, 1995), Chap. 4, and on construction workers generally, Ian J. Kerr, “On the Move: Circulating Labor in Pre-Colonial, Colonial, and Post- Colonial India,” International Review of Social History, 51 (2006), Supplement S14, 85–109. 10 In the early 1860s, nearly 70 per cent of convicts in Bengal were described as “agricultural- ists,” with a further 15 per cent from the “coolie” or labouring class: Frederic J. Mouat, “On Prison Ethics and Prison Labour,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 54 (1891), 241.
India were buildings adapted from earlier use as forts, travellers’ rest-houses, and barracks – places ill-designed for the effective containment and disciplin- ary control of large and often turbulent prison populations. Few new, purpose- built prisons on the lines of the reformed institutions of Britain and the United States were constructed in India before the 1850s.11 Even after the siphoning off of significant numbers of convicts through transportation overseas, Indian jails provided insufficient accommodation for the growing number of convicts, especially as other forms of judicial punishment such as amputation, brand- ing, and whipping (which might require only short-term incarceration) were in decline.12 Setting convicts to toil on the roads was a practical way of employ- ing them in work that would yield some benefit to the public – or at least to the state. There were further considerations, too. Since prisons in their unreformed condition were seen to be havens of disease, idleness, vice, and squalor, there were moral arguments as well as material advantages in keeping convicts actively engaged outside them. Given the small percentage of female convicts in India (under 5 per cent),13 outdoor labour was more practicable than if the proportion of female inmates had been higher and indoor work had had to be found for larger numbers of women convicts. Finally, the commonest sentence handed out by courts and magistrates in India was for “hard labour” or “rigorous imprisonment.” There was no clear definition of what this sen- tence entailed, even in the Penal Code of 1860, but it was generally understood to mean hard physical labour, and, before the 1840s, it was difficult to provide that on a regular basis within the prison.14 The appointment of the Committee on Prison Discipline in 1836 has widely been seen as marking a critical turning-point in the history of the colo- nial prison in India.15 Reporting in 1838, principally on the vast and sprawling
11 John Mulvany, “Bengal Jails in Early Days,” Calcutta Review, no. 293 (1918), 295–297. 12 Jörg Fisch, Cheap Lives and Dear Limbs: The British Transformation of the Bengal Criminal Law, 1769–1817 (Wiesbaden, 1983); Radhika Singha, “‘No Needless Pains or Unintended Pleasures’: Penal ‘Reform’ in the Colony, 1825–45,” Studies in History, 11 (1995), 29–76. 13 There were 24,933 women prisoners in British India in 1891 compared to 526,804 men (4.3 per cent of the total). The corresponding figure in Britain was closer to 10 per cent: Billington, Woman in India, 240. Of the 302,274 prisoners admitted to the jails of Bengal in 1861–65, only 10,513 were females (3.5 per cent): Mouat, “On Prison Ethics,” 233. 14 Frederic A. Barker, The Modern Prison System of India (London, 1944), 26. 15 Radhika Singha, A Despotism of Law: Crime and Justice in Early Colonial India (Delhi, 1998), 253–265; David Arnold, “India: The Contested Prison,” in Frank Dikötter and Ian Brown, eds., Cultures of Confinement: A History of the Prison in Africa, Asia and Latin America (London, 2007), 152–157.
Bengal Presidency but drawing data from across the British territories, and speaking with an authority that was bound to resonate across the Indian empire, the committee set its face firmly against the existing system of extra- mural labour. In Bengal alone this involved an estimated 13,000 men on road work, three-quarters of the current convict population.16 The committee declared that effective penal discipline was “rendered nugatory” by the use of extramural labour in road gangs, adding: “We regard the employment of con- victs on the roads as, without exception, the worst method of treatment that has ever been provided under the British Government [in India] for this class of person.”17 Members of the scattered and poorly supervised gangs used the laxity of extramural labour to chat with friends and relatives, to receive tobacco, food, and money, to idle away their time, or simply to escape. Convict labour was shown to be grossly inefficient in terms of the work performed and its costs, a situation that could only be improved, it was said, by greater recourse to the use of scarce and expensive European supervision. Moreover, in a med- ico-sanitary line of argument that repeatedly informed India’s prison debates, extramural labour was condemned as highly detrimental to convicts’ health. Away from the prison, their diets were poor and their accommodation skimpy; their ailments received inadequate medical attention. Labouring in chains caused suppurating sores and ulcers, especially dangerous in India’s hot and humid climate, and, without access to clean drinking water, they fell prey to cholera, dysentery, and other infections. Convicts suffered from prolonged exposure to the elements and from “miasmatic” disorders like malaria. Little wonder, then, that sickness and mortality rates among road convicts were held to be unacceptably high, at times amounting to a virtual sentence of death on those convicted of non-capital offences.18 Health and labour thus became closely entwined penal – and moral – concerns.19 Influenced not just by the reforms of John Howard but also more recent Benthamite doctrines, the
16 Report of the Committee on Prison Discipline (Calcutta, 1838), 18. 17 Ibid., 11, 59. 18 The mortality rate among outdoor convicts was 11.2 per cent a year compared to 7.3 among those held indoors: [J. Capper], “Indian Jail Industry,” Calcutta Review, 29, 58 (1857): 20. On prison health and labour, see James Hutchinson, Observations on the General and Medical Management of Indian Jails (Calcutta, 1845, 2nd ed.), Chap. 4. An earlier version of this work, published by Hutchinson under the title A Report on the Medical Management of the Native Jails (Calcutta, 1835), helped influence the committee’s view on the medical imperative for prison reform. 19 On the prison as a site of medical observation and sanitary intervention, see David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India (Berkeley, 1993), Chap. 2.
20 Committee on Prison Discipline, 45–61. 21 As in Baroda: Bombay Political Proceedings, no. 450, 1873, India Office Records (ior), British Library, London. 22 As at Agra and Meerut in the 1840s: North-Western Provinces Criminal Judicial Proceedings, nos 131, 135, 11 April 1845, ior; ibid., no. 141, 12 April 1845, ior. In Madras in the 1840s one-third of all prisoners worked on the roads, though the numbers were declin- ing year on year: East India: Lords’ Third Report, House of Lords, Reports from Committees, vol. 33, 1852–3, Appendix B, “Report from [Madras] Board of Public Works, on the Experiment of Employing Convict Labour in the Construction of Public Roads.” 23 W.J. Wilson, Memorandum on the Progress of the Jail Department in the Madras Presidency from 1865 to 1874, ior.
Table 7.1 Percentage of those convicts sentenced to imprisonment with labour employed on different tasks, 1875.
All India Madras nwp Bengal
Prison officers 3.5 7.7 2.2 3.7 Prison servants 15.6 20.1 18.0 13.2 Jail gardens 5.2 4.5 3.7 4.6 Jail building and repair 17.0 7.5 32.9 19.3 Manufacturing 38.9 26.7 22.7 48.4 Extramural labour 6.5 17.2 1.2 2.8
Source: Indian Jail Conference, 1877, 152.
24 According to Mouat, the use of convict labour for private individuals was prohibited in Bengal in 1852, but his statistics show that, even in the early 1860s, small but significant numbers of convicts were hired out to the Department of Public Works or continued to work on the roads: Mouat, “Prison Ethics,” 227, 242. 25 Report of the Indian Jail Conference, 1877 (Calcutta: Home Secretariat Press, 1877), 112. For extramural labour as a means of relieving overcrowding in jails, see Madras Judicial Proceedings, nos 136–139, 12 April 1864, ior. 26 “Memorandum by Dr. Lethbridge on the Sanitary Condition of the Settlement,” in Charles J. Lyall and Alfred S. Lethbridge, Report on the Working of the Penal Settlement of Port Blair (Calcutta, 1890), Appendix C. See also Vaidik, Imperial Andamans, Chaps 5 and 6.
27 E.g., Report on the Diet of Prisoners and of the Industrial and Labouring Classes in the Bombay Presidency (Bombay, 1865). 28 Home (Judicial), nos 121–152, October 1882, National Archives of India (nai), New Delhi. 29 C.G. Wiehe, Journal of a Tour of Inspection of the Principal Jails in India made by the Inspector General of Prisons, Bombay Presidency (Bombay, 1865), 39–40; Stewart Clark, History of the Central Prisons of the North-Western Provinces (Allahabad: Government Press, 1868), 27. 30 Barker, Modern Prison System, 33. 31 J. Rohde, Report of the Inspector of Prisons, Fort St. George, 1856 (Madras, 1856), no pagina- tion, paragraph 8; Report of the Indian Jail Conference, 1877, 20.
Labour Inside the Prison
Taking its cue from Jeremy Bentham, the 1838 prison discipline committee favoured forms of labour that could be pursued within the confines of the prison, were amenable to close supervision, and entailed clear work targets. In particular the committee proposed that prison labour should principally take the form of dull, monotonous, and repetitive task work, such as the use (as in Britain) of the treadmill.35 In the spirit of the committee’s recommendations, subsequent prison reports and jail manuals stressed that labour, performed for up to ten hours a day, was to be “the principal means of enforcing discipline in
32 On the plantation regime, see Rana P. Behal, “Power Structure, Discipline, and Labour in Assam Tea Plantations under Colonial Rule,” International Review of Social History, 51 (2006), Supplement S14, 143–172. 33 Special Report on the Working of Act I of 1882 in the Province of Assam During the Years 1886–1889 (Calcutta, 1890), 197. On the working of the 1859 Act, see Harendra Chandra Sinha and Pramode Chandra Dutt, The Workman’s Breach of Contract Act (Calcutta, 1899). 34 Report of the Assam Labour Enquiry Committee, 1906 (Calcutta, 1906), 105. On plantation legislation, see Rajani Kanta Das, History of Indian Labour Legislation (Calcutta, 1941), Chap. 1. 35 Committee on Prison Discipline, 105–111.
36 George Alexander Hodge, The Bengal Jail Manual (Calcutta, 1867), 91; J. Cruikshank, A Manual of Jail Rules for the Superintendent and Management of Jails in the Bombay Presidency (Bombay, 1876), 35. 37 Stewart Clark, A Manual of Jail Discipline and Economy for the Use of Officers in Charge of Jails in the North Western Provinces (Agra, 1863), 29. 38 Prisoners in English jails cost £34 a year; those in north India’s central jails barely £4 each: Clark, History of the Central Prisons, 20. 39 Wiehe, Journal of a Tour; Clark, History of the Central Prisons; Wilson, Memorandum on the Progress of the Jail Department, ior. 40 Clare Anderson, The Indian Uprising of 1857–1858: Prisons, Prisoners and Rebellion (London, 2007).
Some machinery of the treadmill type, as recommended by the 1838 committee, was introduced, but it broke down due to the effects of climate, as a result of poor maintenance, and as a consequence of prisoners’ resistance to its use.41 A substantial objection arose, too, from considerations of caste, community, and race. To take race first, although only relatively small numbers of Europeans were imprisoned in India,42 they were treated (almost regardless of the offence) as a privileged community, segregated from Indian convicts, and given special prerogatives of diet and dress. For Europeans even to be in prison in India was said to be “a more severe punishment than to Natives.”43 In some hill stations, such as Ootacamund in the Madras Presidency from the 1850s, special prisons, or entire wings, were constructed and maintained for use by whites alone. Europeans were generally required to work and in Calcutta this appears to have included stone-breaking. But mostly, as at Ootacamund, only relatively light work tasks were required – making coir mats, carpentry, tailoring. For reasons of racial prestige, Europeans were never assigned to chain gangs or deployed on the public roads.44 With regard to caste and community, the issue was more complex. Physical labour was the mark of the lowest Hindu castes (and their Muslim counter- parts), while such ritually polluting tasks as shoemaking, which involved han- dling leather, or the removal of human urine and excrement, were regarded as the stigmatising occupations of the very lowest castes, the untouchables. Was it, therefore, legitimate penal practice to force high-caste Hindus, or well-born (ashraf) Muslims, to toil as if they were from labouring or untouchable castes? Was denial of caste status a morally justified attribute of prison life, even a fit- ting deterrent against further criminal acts? The British were particularly wary on this score because of the intense resistance to common messing in north Indian jails in the 1840s and 1850s, which, by denying high-caste prisoners the right to cook their own food, provoked fierce prison demonstrations and con- tributed to the rash of jailbreaks during the opening phase of the 1857–58 uprising.45 Colonial authorities also recognized the strength of Indian feeling
41 W.H. Woodcock, to Secretary, nwp, 29 January 1846, nwp Criminal Judicial Proceedings, no. 19, 4 March 1846, ior. 42 In the 1870s there were about 1,200 European and Eurasian prisoners in British India: Indian Jail Conference, 1877, 176–177. 43 Ibid., 32. 44 Wiehe, Journal of a Tour, 4, 25. 45 Anand A. Yang, “Disciplining ‘Natives’: Prisons and Prisoners in Early Nineteenth Century India,” South Asia, 10 (1987), 29–45; David Arnold, “The Colonial Prison: Power, Knowledge and Penology in Nineteenth-Century India,” in David Arnold and David Hardiman, eds., Subaltern Studies VIII (Delhi, 1994), 150–53; Anderson, Indian Uprising, Chap. 3.
In allotting labour to convicts reasonable allowance shall be made for caste prejudice, e.g., no Brahman or caste Hindu shall be employed in chucklers’ [cobblers’] work. Care shall, however, be taken that caste prej- udice is not made an excuse for avoiding heavy forms of labour.48
But this compromise was only arrived at after a great deal of negotiation among prison administrators, provincial and central governments. In 1871, for instance, the Government of India stated its view (in response to doubts raised by the Madras inspector-general) that no prisoner should be put to “any labour which really causes the loss of caste.” It continued:
it is a general principle of universal application throughout India that the jail management should be such as not to give even a colourable pretext for the belief that there is any intention on the part of Government to destroy the caste of such natives as may become inmates of our jails.49
Even in the interests of penal discipline, prisons were not free – the Government of India insisted – to impose work requirements on convicts that amounted to
46 Committee on Prison Discipline, 106. 47 Ibid., 110. 48 The Madras Jail Manual (Madras, 1899), 121. For a similar concern to adjudicate between “caste prejudices” and “false pleas” for exemption from labour, see the Bengal Jail Code of 1864, cited in Mouat, “Prison Ethics,” 249. 49 Secretary, India, Home (Judicial), to Chief Secretary, Madras, 8 July 1871, Madras Judicial Proceedings, no. 98, 24 October 1871, ior.
“actual forfeiture of caste,” for this would amount to “a very severe penalty which the law has not sanctioned, [and] which the sentencing officer has not probably taken into consideration in passing sentence.”50 In other words, prisoners retained a social identity which it was not in the interests of the colonial regime to ignore. The hierarchical social values and occupational practices that characterized the world of work outside the jail were thus re-inscribed – given institutional sanction – within prison walls. The converse of this privileging of caste was that the more lowly tasks and pollut- ing occupations in the jail continued to be allocated to low-ranking communi- ties. It was expected that someone from a hereditary trade – a cobbler, a tailor, a weaver – would do similar work inside the jail, just as it would be very rare to require a Brahmin, for whom working with leather was anathema, to make shoes: he was far more likely to be given a clerical job or sent to the prison print-shop. Scavenging could only be assigned to a prisoner from the sweeper caste: it could not be allocated, even as a punishment, to a convict from another community.51 The question was even raised whether high-caste prisoners could be required to wash their own clothes rather than expecting prisoners from the dhobi (washerman) caste to do it for them.52 The allocation of prison labour thus grew increasing complex and differen- tiated over the course of the nineteenth century, and the prison administration had constantly to keep in mind the caste of its convicts and the form of labour appropriate to their status. Partly for caste reasons, but also in order to estab- lish a hierarchy of tasks suited to different categories of prisoners, by the 1860s and 1870s jail superintendents had divided intramural labour into three classes:
1. “hard labour,” such as grinding oilseeds or food-grains, making pulp for paper, doing earth-work, drawing water, sawing wood, or (where deemed appropriate) scavenging; 2. “middle labour,” such as mason’s work, making blankets, carpets, and dhurris (cotton rugs), or doing carpentry; 3. “light labour,” such as tailoring, bookbinding, gardening, or (where han- dling leather was acceptable) saddle-making.53
50 Ibid. 51 Inspector-General of Jails, Madras, to Chief Secretary, Madras, 21 August 1871, in ibid. 52 Fredric J. Mouat, Reports on Jails Visited and Inspected in Bengal, Behar, and Arracan (Calcutta, 1856), 48. 53 Clark, History of the Central Prisons, 16. For a fuller classification of tasks, see Mouat, “Prison Ethics,” 248.
Each of these tasks was precisely delineated and given a monetary value: thus, the work of a convict tailor, required to sew four shirts or one pair of pyjamas a day, was rated at between one and a half annas to two and a quarter annas.54 The allocation of task work was further subject to medical supervision. As stated in the Bengal Jail Code of 1864, “The class of labour on which every pris- oner sentenced to rigorous imprisonment shall be placed shall be determined by the Medical Officer, with reference to the state of health of the prisoner at the time, and his ability to undergo hard labour.” It was further left to the medi- cal officer to decide whether convalescent and aged prisoners should also be assigned work.55
F.J. Mouat and India’s Jail Industries
The analogy, or, more emphatically, the correlation, between the prison and the factory has long been noted,56 and by the late nineteenth century the model of the factory came to hold a particular relevance for work regimes in the jails of colonial India. As noted earlier, there was little sustained interest in developing prison farms in India, a predominantly agrarian society, but transforming prisons – more especially the large central jails with their con- centrations of long-term prisoners – into centres of manufacturing was, from a colonial perspective, a far more attractive proposition. The prison-as-factory model allowed for the productive redeployment of intramural labour while continuing to allow for the allocation of task work according to a convict’s occupational background and caste status. It was likely to be more conducive to prisoners than such “monotonous and wearisome” labour as working a treadmill, and less likely to incur convict resistance, a factor to which Mouat attached singular importance.57 Jail industries tapped into the longstanding belief that prisons could dis- seminate the skills and techniques needed for India’s “improvement,” and which were found currently lacking among peasants, artisans, and labourers. Jails might thereby become pioneers of progress, teachers and exemplars for
54 Clark, Manual, 33–34. In British India there were 16 annas to a rupee. 55 Cited in Mouat, “Prison Ethics,” 248–249. 56 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Harmondsworth, 1979); Dario Melossi and Massimo Pavarini, The Prison and the Factory: Origins of the Penitentiary System (London, 1981). 57 Mouat, “Prison Ethics,” 219.
I soon ascertained [he wrote ten years after becoming inspector-general] that the maintenance of the strictest discipline is consistent with the conversion of jails into schools of industry, and that if the labour of pris- oners were promptly and judiciously directed, they would not only repay the whole cost of their maintenance but acquire a knowledge of handi- crafts that would enable them to earn an honest livelihood on release, so as far as caste prejudices would admit of their commencing a new career.61
58 [Capper], “Indian Jail Industry,” 31–33; cf. Dr. Robert Wight, “Observations on the Employment of Convicts in Agriculture,” 24 November 1836, Board’s Collections, F/4/1815: 74864, ior. 59 E.g., J.H. Harrington, report on Alipore jail, 3 August 1816, Board’s Collections, F/4/579: 14081, ior. 60 Mouat, “Prison Ethics,” 230. In one of many mutual exchanges between India and Southeast Asia, Mouat claimed he had been influenced in his views by seeing the indus- trial training of convicts in Singapore and the Straits Settlements in 1851: ibid., 232. 61 F.J. Mouat, Report on the Statistics of the Prisons of the Lower Provinces of the Bengal Presidency for 1861, 1862, 1863, 1864, and 1865 (Calcutta: Alipore Jail Press, 1868), 17.
Labour – Mouat declared – was “one of the greatest blessings conferred upon man by the Creator,” and so to “attach a sense of degradation to it in our penal system” was “an error of principle.”62 Where monotonous and fruitless labour on “aimless tasks” would incite prisoners’ resentment and resistance and harden their criminality, Mouat believed that useful toil would encourage their cooperation and facilitate their reform. A day’s hard but honest labour would leave them tired out and so less disposed to that “dangerous association which is destructive of all moral feeling” – the unspoken allusion here was to sodomy and others “unnatural” vices among prisoners locked up all night in crowded wards.63 Moreover, Mouat believed that his system of “well regulated labour” was capable of achieving its intended effect.
So long as a prisoner works well, completes his task in the regulated time, acquires skill as a workman, and is generally well behaved, I am satisfied that his imprisonment is attended with benefit, and that he will not be likely to relapse into crime when restored to liberty.64
Under Mouat’s direction several large prisons in Bengal, led by Calcutta’s once turbulent Alipore jail, became leading sites of manufacturing. Over the five year period 1861–65, the province’s jails turned out goods worth £193,000 (Rs 1,934,418), making profitable use of the labour of nearly two-thirds of the convicts sentenced to rigorous imprisonment.65 In 1861 alone, Alipore pro- duced high quality printing work, gunny bags, and a variety of other goods, with a total value of Rs 269,557.66 The reputation of India’s jail-made goods was further enhanced by their display at Indian and international exhibitions.67 The trend for prisons to become industrial enterprises soon became evident in other parts of India as well with the manufacture in several provinces of carpets, blankets, boots, shoes, cotton and woollen goods. The bulk of the goods produced went to meet the prisons’ own needs – as for blankets and convict uniforms – thereby reducing departmental costs; but jail-made goods were also supplied to other government departments, such as the police and army. Some, like the carpets, were sold to the public. Between the 1850s and 1870s prison presses in Calcutta and Madras printed many of the governments’
62 Mouat, “Prison Ethics,” 225. 63 Ibid., 221. 64 Ibid., 220. 65 Mouat, Report on the Statistics, 26; Mouat, “Prison Ethics,” 239, 243–247. 66 Wiehe, Journal of a Tour, 18, 22. 67 Mouat, “Prison Ethics,” 214, 229.
68 The Madras penitentiary, for example, produced Rs 33,724 worth of printing for the pro- vincial government in 1873: Wilson, Memorandum, 28. 69 Wiehe, Journal of a Tour, 51; Courtenay Latimer, Monograph on Carpet Making in the Punjab, 1905–1906 (Lahore, 1906). 70 Indian Jail Conference, 1877, 156–158. 71 Wiehe, Journal of a Tour, 23; see also Mary Carpenter, Six Months in India (London, 1868), 1, 200–201. 72 A.P. Howell, Note on Jails and Jail Discipline in India, 1867–68 (Calcutta, 1868), 42. 73 Wiehe, Journal of a Tour, 22. 74 Report of the Indian Jails Committee, 1919–1920 (Simla, 1920), 1, 117–118.
British rule in India – laissez-faire.75 When this objection was taken to the Government of India in 1882, the Liberal viceroy of the day, Lord Ripon, took the view that jail manufactures “should interfere as little as possible with pri- vate industries.” He added:
If it were not for the admitted exigencies of sound prison management, I should be opposed to the existence of jail manufactures in India alto- gether, and I am very clearly of opinion that they should be regarded not as a source of revenue, but as a branch of prison discipline.76
In a government resolution in November 1882, it was further proposed that jail-made goods should not enjoy any preference in supplying government departments and that steam-powered machinery should be banned. This drew an outcry from the provinces and, under pressure from the Secretary of State for India in London, the Government of India was forced to adopt a more accommodating position.77 Many provinces ignored the prohibition on the use of modern machinery, and well into the 1930s central jails across the country remained large and profitable sites of manufacture and significant employers of what was, in effect, industrial labour.78
Convict Officers and Servants
As Table 7.1 indicates, there were other significant categories of labour in the Indian prison which do not normally enter into consideration of convict work regimes. Thus, prisoners were often used as personal servants, within and out- side the prison, to perform domestic chores for the superintendent and his family. Cleaning, cooking, gardening, and house maintenance were among the many tasks to which male and female convicts were assigned. So widespread was this practice that the jail manuals for Bengal in the 1860s and Madras in the 1890s found it necessary to stipulate that no more than 10 per cent of prisoners should be employed as cooks, barbers, sweepers, and hospital
75 For Mouat’s response to these and other criticisms, see his “Prison Ethics,” 223–225. 76 Lord Ripon, 16 August 1882, India, Home (Judicial), nos 121–152, October 1882, National Archives of India (nai), New Delhi. 77 Home (Judicial), nos 14–23, September 1883, nai; Home (Judicial), nos 328–351, June 1883, nai. On the long-term issue, see Padmini Swaminathan, “Prison as Factory: A Study of Jail Manufactures in the Madras Presidency,” Studies in History, 11 (1995), 77–100. 78 Report of the United Provinces Jails Inquiry Committee, 1929 (Allahabad, 1929).
79 Bengal Jail Code, cited in Mouat, “Prison Ethics,” 250, 252; Madras Jail Manual, 128. 80 Alexander G. Cardew, Report on Jail Administration in Madras (Madras, 1891), 65. On the employment of female convicts, see Satadru Sen, “The Female Jails of Colonial India,” Indian Economic and Social History Review, 39 (2002), 421–425. 81 Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India: The Namasudras of Bengal, 1872–1947 (Richmond, 1997), 34–35. 82 John F.A. McNair and W.D. Bayliss, Prisoners Their Own Warders (Westminster, 1899). For the use of English prisoners at Newgate as “wardsmen and wardswomen,” see [Charles Dickens], Sketches by Boz (new ed., London, 1839), 219. 83 Report of the Committee on Jail Administration in India (Calcutta: Superintendent, Government Printing, 1889), 49.
Political Labour
All convict labour was “political” in the sense that it was carried out at the behest of the state, according to rules that the state had devised, or for pur- poses of coercion, punishment, and reform that conformed to the state’s wider political agenda. The reformed prison system in India and its labour regime was represented from the 1830s as being, at least in intention, principled, moral, and humane, and hence served as a marker for the “civilized” nature of British rule.86 It was, in Mouat’s view, an ethical system of prison governance. The prison could thus serve a self-legitimising rhetorical purpose and a moral value for the colonial power, even though the brutality, squalor, and corruption revealed by prison reports and enquires was hard to deny or disguise. But even this was deflected away from imperial failings and attributed to Indians’ “preju- dices” or to their inveterate vice and criminality. However, the rise of the Indian nationalist movement and its increasing militancy radically changed the political context of the colonial prison system and gave a new political direction to convict labour policies and practices. A growing number of the new prisoners entering Indian jails by the 1890s and 1900s were educated and middle class, from high-status communities, con- victed of political crimes against the colonial state.87 Some of the earliest of these political prisoners, like the Bengali nationalist Surendranath Banerjea – who described his two months in prison in 1883 as “a comfortable spell of rest” – and the Maharashtrian leader Bal Gangadhar Tilak, sent to Mandalay
84 Indian Jail Conference, 1877, 69–72; William Walker, Rules for the Management and Discipline of Prisoners in the North-Western Provinces and Oudh (Allahabad, 1882), 42, 48, 115–116. 85 Mouat, “Prison Ethics,” 226; Report of the United Provinces Jails Inquiry Committee, 1929, 67–68, 105–106. 86 Committee on Prison Discipline, 68. 87 For the history and treatment of political prisoners in India, see Ujjwal Kumar Singh, Political Prisoners in India (New Delhi, 1998).
Jail in 1908, appear to have been exempt from manual labour.88 But with the rise of revolutionary violence (“terrorism”) in the early twentieth century the British had recourse to intentionally harsh labour practices in order to punish and humiliate those they saw as extreme opponents and a threat to the colo- nial order. Labour of this kind had little economic value or reforming intent. It was brutal punishment and raw revenge, designed to break the convicts physically and to crush their defiant spirit. This trend was most evident in the Andamans where political prisoners, confined in the Cellular Jail, were required to perform arduous physical work on hand-operated oil-presses and other milling devices. If they failed to meet their fixed daily quotas of work the prisoners were flogged or put in solitary confinement. The severity of this penal regime gave rise to acts of individual defiance and a series of prison strikes, but, in the short term at least, these did little to reduce the burden of work imposed.89 The treatment of political prisoners in mainland India, especially from the start of the non-cooperation and civil disobedience movement led by M.K. Gandhi from 1920 onwards, also provoked controversy, not least with respect to the way in which political prisoners were treated, to their indigna- tion and disgust, like ordinary (“criminal”) inmates. Many were assigned to hard labour, to tasks such as oilseed pressing or drawing water that were decried as “inhumane” and which could more easily and productively have been done by animals or machines.90 The new prisoners, backed by their allies outside the jail, demanded the cre- ation of a new category of “political prisoners,” one that would ensure greater freedom of dress, diet, and association, allow them access to newspapers, books, and writing materials, as well exemption from all work tasks, apart from those that they might voluntarily choose for themselves. They further demanded that they should be allowed, as befitted their largely middle-class status but in violation of the racial divide that had long underpinned prison practice in India, conditions that would put them on a par with European pris- oners and their privileged terms of incarceration.91 At first resistant, the British
88 Surendranath Banerjea, A Nation in the Making: Being the Reminiscence of Fifty Years of Public Life (1925) (Calcutta, 1963), 77; S.L. Karandikar, Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak: The Hercules and Prometheus of Modern India (Poona: no date given), 339. 89 Vinayak D. Savarkar, The Story of My Transportation for Life (Bombay, 1950), 112–154; Sen, Disciplining Punishment, 264–272. 90 Raghubir Sahai, Life in an Indian Jail (Allahabad, 1937), 8. 91 Report of the United Provinces Jails Inquiry, 1929, 242–253; Shiv Verma, ed., Selected Writings of Shaheed Bhagat Singh (New Delhi, 1986), 77–78.
Conclusion
This discussion has tried to indicate the changing priorities and diverse nature of convict work regimes in colonial India. From the British perspective, espe- cially following the report of the prison discipline committee in 1838, prison labour was always appraised for more than its economic value. The manner in which convicts were employed – inside the prison or outside it – and the close attention paid to many aspects of prison administration – such as prison diets – demonstrated the value of the prison to the British as a site of moral ascendency and scientific enquiry as well as of material gain – even though the reality of the prison belied many of the colonial state’s claims to be “humane” and “civilized” in its treatment of prisoners. But perhaps what is most striking about this Indian case study, from a com- parative and global perspective, is the extent to which colonial attempts to impose a uniform and exacting work regime on convicts were questioned and qualified from within the colonial administration itself – on grounds of disci- pline, health, and the need to respect caste “prejudices” – as well as being overtly opposed or tacitly undermined by prisoners themselves. This is not to say that prison life in India was never harsh, nor to suggest that convicts lived lives of idleness and ease. But it does suggest a degree of Indian agency in the manner in which prison work regimes were devised and implemented. In some ways it suited the colonial power not to be more draconian, even to operate a relatively “soft” penal work regime, whether for the sake of a wider political expediency (in order to avoid more systematic resistance), or from recognition that prison labour could be usefully deployed in construction work for which paid labour was unavailable or unaffordable. Convict labour could likewise be put to use, in a society where manufacturing was still in its
92 Report of the United Provinces Jails Reform Committee (Allahabad, 1938), 18.
Jean-Lucien Sanchez
Following the work of Michel Foucault’s Surveiller et punir, published in 1975, many studies of the prison system have emerged in France and scholars have developed an important historiography of the penal system.2 Nevertheless, if the prison itself has been closely examined, the penal colonies of the French empire have received much less attention. The initiator of the historiography of prisons in French Guiana remains unquestionably Michel Pierre whose 1982 book La terre de la grande punition. Histoire des bagnes de Guyane,3 was the first devoted to this topic and to stimulate an area of research.4 Following him, Danielle Donet-Vincent produced the most complete and most knowledge- able studies of the prisons of French Guiana, in a pair of books that represent the sum of the most comprehensive historiography.5 The value of Donet- Vincent’s work lies in his use of original and unique sources, especially the papers of Charles Péan and Gaston Monnerville, who were instrumental in the abolition of prisons in French Guiana. However, these studies have mostly focused on a single class of convicts, the transportés – those condemned to hard labour –, and analyze the history of the prison in general over the long term, without closely examining the internal functioning of penitentiaries. This is not surprising, as the transportés were the largest category of convicts in
1 The author wishes to thank Selim Rauer, Alex Lichtenstein and Christian G. De Vito for their assistance. 2 Jacques-Guy Petit, Ces peines obscures. La prison pénale en France 1780–1875 (Paris, 1990) and Robert Badinter, La prison républicaine: 1871–1914 (Paris, 1994). 3 Michel Pierre, La terre de la grande punition. Histoire des bagnes de Guyane (Paris, 1982), reis- sued as Bagnards. La terre de la grande punition. Cayenne 1852–1953 (Paris, 2000). For prison of New Calédonia, see Louis-José Barbançon, L’Archipel des forçats: l’histoire du bagne de Nouvelle-Calédonie (1863–1931) (Villeneuve-d’Ascq, 2003) and Isabelle Merle Expériences colo- niales. La Nouvelle-Calédonie (1853–1920) (Paris, 1995). 4 Jacques-Guy Petit, Nicole Castan, Claude Faugeron, Michel Pierre, André Zysberg, eds, Histoire des galères, bagnes et prisons. XIIIème-XXème siècles. Introduction à l’histoire pénale de la France (Paris, 1991). 5 Danielle Donet-Vincent, La fin du bagne (Rennes, 1992) and Danielle Donet-Vincent, De soleil et de silences. Histoire des bagnes de Guyane (Paris, 2003).
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004285026_010
French Guiana (nearly 52 000 individuals) and their history is the longest (from 1852 to 1953). But aside from the transportés, another less known category of convicts, the relégués, were sentenced to forced labour in French Guiana from 1887 to 1953. This essay will analyze this criminal category which represents a unique aspect of the French colonial and criminal historiography. Adopting an approach of “asylum” in reference to the works of Erving Goffman,6 the chapter presents the internal functioning of the institution confining the relégués in the prison of Saint-Jean-du-Maroni. In doing so, the chapter addresses the political ques- tion of control over the prison and, more generally, the impact of this institu- tion in the colony. While formally under the supervision of the governor of the colony, the director of the prison ruled a vast territory – the entire prison terri- tory of Maroni – far away from the capital of the colony, Cayenne, where the governor resided. This led to a situation of double colonization, with French Guiana virtually divided into two territories in which two different powers reigned supreme: on the one hand, the director of the prison, who sought to manage the establishment under his charge; on the other the governor, who hoped to develop and administer the colony under his authority as best as he could.7 This chapter analyzes this double colonization through the example of the relégués interned in the penitentiary of Saint-Jean. Moving from internal prison governance to the larger question of colonial sovereignty, it seeks to explore the main features of the colonial Franco-Guyanese state and the ten- sion embedded in the local executive power of the penal colony.8 Not surprisingly, this double sovereignty is mirrored in the structure of the archival records that open a window onto penal life in the colony. The records produced by the department of the Ministry of the Colonies, which was responsible for the prison, are available at the Archives nationales d’outre- mer (anom) in Aix-en-Provence, in the serie H Colonies.9 Conversely, the other major series of penal records of French Guiana, regarding the archives of the governor, can be found at the Archives départementales de Guyane (adg),
6 Erving Goffman, asiles: études sur la condition sociale des malades mentaux et autres reclus (Paris, 1990). 7 Jean-Lucien Sanchez, A perpétuité. Relégués au bagne de Guyane (Paris, 2013), 47. 8 Ann Laura Stoler, Frederick Cooper, « Between Metropole and Colony: Rethinking a Research Agenda », in Ann Laura Stoler, Frederick Cooper, eds, Tensions of Empire. Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1997), 3. 9 Sylvie Clair, Odile Krakovitch, Jean Préteux, eds, Établissements pénitentiaires coloniaux, 1792–1952. Série Colonies H, Répertoire numérique (Paris, 1990).
What were the Different Categories of Convicts in French Guiana?
There were several categories of prisoners condemned to hard labour in French Guiana. The most common were the transportés, that is to say those con- demned to hard labour by criminal courts under the law on transportation of May 30, 1854. Until 1852, hard labour was carried out in France, in port prisons located primarily in Brest, Toulon and Rochefort. Strongly influenced by the model of penal colonization developed by Great Britain in Australia, Napoleon III decided in 1854 to send all prisoners condemned to hard labour to the colo- nies, specifically to French Guiana.10 In doing so, the law allowed metropolitan France to get rid of the convicts on its soil by sending them far enough away to prevent any return. Simultaneously, transportation allowed the colony to ben- efit from an abundant and cheap workforce, seen as a necessity since the aboli- tion of slavery in 1848. Finally, this penal project also contained within it the seeds of territorial colonization: the aim was to allow the best among the con- victs to settle permanently in the colony upon their release from prison and to support them with a grant of land. The challenge, then, was to enable convicts to redeem a life beyond the borders of the metropolis and promote the devel- opment of the French colonial empire. The law on transportation of May 30, 1854 required convicts to be deployed to “the hardest work of colonization” and Article 6 required that those con- demned to less than eight years hard labour had to remain, at the expiration of their sentence, in the colony a time equal to the length of their sentence. Conversely, if their sentence was more than eight years, they were required to remain for life in the colony at the end of their sentence. This was known as doublage (doubling) and the transportés in this case were called 4ème 1ère (4th Section, 1st class), while those sentenced to less than eight years after their doublage was made, were called 4ème 2ème (4th Section, 2nd class) and were then free to return home if they had enough money for their repatriation. Work patterns for the transportés were organized in a rigid hierarchy. Upon arrival in French Guiana, they were appointed to the third class which included three levels (3rd, 2nd and 1st class): to move from one class to another,
10 Michel Pierre, Bagnards. La terre de la grande punition. Cayenne 1852–1953, op. cit., 24.
Art. 4. Repeat offenders who will be relegated, in any order whatsoever, and in an interval of ten years, excluding the length of any sentence served, have incurred the convictions listed in one of the following paragraphs:
– The first. Two sentences to hard labour or confinement without a der- ogation from the provisions of paragraphs 1 and 2 of art. 6 of the Act of May 30, 1854; – Second. One of the convictions in the preceding paragraph and two sentences, or to imprisonment for acts defined as crimes, or more than three months in prison for: larceny; breach of trust; outrage public decency; incitement of minors’ debauchery; begging or vagrancy, through application of art. 277 and 279 of the Penal Code; – Third. Four convictions, or to imprisonment for acts defined as crimes, or more than three months’ imprisonment for offences specified in paragraph above;
– Fourth. Seven convictions, including two at least under the preceding paragraphs, and the other, or for vagrancy, or for violation of the prohi- bition of residence served by the application of s. 19 of this Act, pro- vided that two of the other convictions are more than three months’ imprisonment.
Any man or woman who appeared before a magistrate and presented a crimi- nal record combination listed above was, if reconvicted, automatically con- demned to relegation. Relegation was a mandatory sentence for the judge to impose, and it was considered an accessory penalty or secondary penalty, that is to say, a security measure taken against a convict once he served his main sentence. It was not the convict’s most recent criminal act that relegation pun- ished, but rather all of the convictions entered on the criminal record of a con- demned, that is to say a total punishment in response to a “criminal career.” The relegation system itself in French Guiana was based on a pecuniary dis- tinction. Relégués who demonstrated sufficient financial resources to support themselves in the colony benefited from the relégation individuelle (individual relegation). The relégués individuels were free in their daily actions (but did not have the right to leave the colony), could make a commitment to work for indi- viduals or in public services of the colony, and were only required to answer two annual roll calls organized by the prison administration. All those who did not have sufficient financial means to support themselves in the colony, how- ever, were supported by the State and thus expected to work for the State. This was the system of the relégation collective (collective relegation), and the relé- gués collectifs were interned in a penitentiary, supervised by officers of the prison administration, and subjected to hard penal labour. In the spirit of the legislation, collective relegation corresponded to a regime in which the relégués received a preparation for work in a colonial environ- ment in order to eventually be placed in the regime of individual relegation. However, in reality, the system of relegation proved similar to the system of transportation and the relégués resembled their counterparts among transpor- tés condemned to hard labour. Between 1887 and 1953, French Guiana received nearly 17,893 relégués: 17 375 men and 519 women. Prisons that received the transportés were located in different corners of French Guiana: Cayenne, on the colony’s northeast coast, had a penitentiary with a relatively small number of convicts; the îles du Salut (three offshore islands of French Guiana) included a penitentiary on the Isle Royale for the most dangerous transportés; a building devoted to solitary confinement on St. Joseph Island; and dwellings for the political prisoners condemned by the Act of June 8, 1850 on the deportation on Devil’s Island (made infamous by
Henri Charriere in Papillon). Located on the coast opposite the îles du Salut, the penitentiary of Kourou was a camp with a small number of convicts. Most of the transportation facilities, however, were located in Maroni, more pre- cisely in the prison territory of Maroni, on the colony’s Northwestern border, across the Maroni river from the Dutch colony of Suriname. This latter territory was exclusively reserved for convicts who were interned in a penitentiary located in the town prison of Saint-Laurent, headed by a
Suriname Atlantic ocean
Saint-Laurent du Maroni Saint-Jean du Maroni Tollinche La Forestière Îles du Salut (Devil’s island) Kourou
Cayenne
Prison territory of Maroni
Mana
Maroni river Brazil
Albina Saint-Laurent Saint-Louis Camp du Tigre 50km Nouveau Camp Saint-Jean 0 10 km 30 mi ©Daniel Dalet /d-maps.com
Figure 8.1 Map of French Guyana.
The Various Penitentiaries and Sub Camps of Relegation
Upon arrival of the first wave of relégués in Saint-Jean in June 1887, the initial project provided by the Minister of the Colonies was to develop a village of set- tlers. The relégués expected to receive land grants and the centre of the village should have been composed of a market place where convicts could come and sell their agricultural produce. They were initially installed in four temporary camps made of huts and isolated from each other. However, confronted with the growing number of newcomers, the commander of the relegation corps decided in 1891 to create a set of twenty barracks of brick and iron concen- trated in the same space. These dwellings were designed to accommodate the relégués, and the camp, called camp central (central camp) or the camp du Grand Plateau, was flanked by a prison and a punishment block and several barracks for guards all around. From a village of settlers, at the behest of the local penal authorities Saint-Jean turned into a penitentiary where the relégués were treated in the
– No additional food at the canteen (maximum one month). – A loss of a portion of salary that cannot exceed one third of the total product of labour (maximum one month). – Prison at night (maximum one month). – Isolation cell (maximum one month). – Dungeon (maximum two weeks).
Nevertheless, the duration of the punishment could be doubled if the relégué committed another offence within three months following his release from prison. These punishments were imposed by a disciplinary commission that met weekly and was chaired by the commander of the relegation assisted by two employees of the prison designated by the director of the prison. The appearance before the commission was driven by a demand for punishment from a prison guard. After finding a fault, the prison guard could make a request and then the punishment would be imposed by a unanimous vote by the commission.11
11 Décret du 22 août 1887 portant organisation du régime disciplinaire des relégués collectifs aux colonies, Archives nationales d’outre mer (anom) H 1954.
Some relégués, called incorrigibles, could be confined for up to four months in the punishment block. Most were detained for serious misconduct and they were usually repeat offenders. Just like in prison, the relégués were subjected to forced labour but the regime in this area was far more draconian than that in force in the main penitentiary at Saint-Jean. The relégués were obliged to observe total silence day and night and during work as well as during rest. Inside the punishment block, those condemned to an isolation cell were put on bread and water every third day and those thrown in the dungeon subsisted on bread and water two days out of three. As of 1899, the prison and the punishment block of the Saint Louis sub- camp were moved back to Saint-Jean. The camp was then transformed into a village consisting of agricultural concessions. But the quality of the land of Saint Louis was poor and the prison agents were not accustomed to agricul- ture. As a result, the concessionaires failed to produce agricultural commodi- ties and many fell ill because of the swampy areas surrounding the site. This experiment failed and in 1908, the camp of Saint Louis was reduced to a sub- camp of Saint-Laurent, providing wood for the town prison, chopped of course by the prisoners. Another sub-camp, Tollinche, created in 1895, was located in Upper Maroni (Haut Maroni), about forty kilometres from Saint-Jean. This was initially a camp to house the relégués deemed too old or disabled and thus unable to work.12 Rather than keeping them in Saint-Jean, prison authorities decided to send them to Tollinche, which would serve as the relegation hospice. However, following complaints by colonial doctors, in 1909 the camp was transformed into a disciplinary camp for incorrigibles. Nevertheless, because of the very high mortality rate and brutality suffered by the relégués in this camp, authorities closed the camp in 1918. Following their evacuation from Tollinche in 1909, all the relégués who were too old or too disabled to work were sent instead to the Nouveau Camp, which became the hospice of relegation and included a ward for convicts with tuberculosis.13 A similar isolation ward was established on the island of Saint Louis, in the middle of the Maroni River, housing both relégués and the transportés suffering from leprosy and forbid- den to leave the island.
12 Rapport fait par M. Gaie, inspecteur de 1ère classe des colonies, concernant la vérification du service de M. Leyraud, Joseph, commandant par intérim à Saint-Jean-du-Maroni, à l’époque du 14 janvier 1899 et explications fournies par cet agent sur les résultats de sa vérification, anom H 1870. 13 L’inspecteur de 1ère classe Fillon au ministre des Colonies, le 20 février 1911, anom H 1864.
Four kilometres from Tollinche, the camp of La Forestière was opened in 1888 and housed the section mobile des relégués (movable section of relégués). Created by decree, in theory this section allowed convicts who volunteered to work in isolated sections of the prison territory of Maroni and aimed to enable them to advance quickly to the status of individual relegation. However, in fact, this camp was strictly disciplinary and made it possible for the superior commander of relegation to expel from the prison of Saint-Jean all the relégués he considered disobedient. Given the low production of this forest camp, it was transformed into an agricultural camp in 1899 and, like Tollinche, aban- doned in 1918.14
The Organization of Hard Labour in Saint-Jean
Despite the existence of such sub-camps, the prison at Saint-Jean remained at the centre of the relégués’ universe. There, the collective relégués worked in four main services: the interior, the works department, the agricultural depart- ment and the ambulance. The interior service included the porte-clefs (the relégués who were auxiliary prison guards), the gardiens de case (the relé- gués responsible for the cleanliness and food of one of the relégués cells), scav- engers (the relégués responsible for emptying the toilets of administrative staff), those assigned to the cleanliness and maintenance of roads, and finally, the relégués assigned to different services such as accounting, harbour, kitch- ens and the clothing shop. The relégués assigned to the works department of the penitentiary were of two kinds: the best qualified in certain trades (masons, blacksmiths, carpenters, etc.) were designated artisan workers (divided into three classes) while those without special training were assigned as appren- tices or labourers. Those employed in the agricultural department were respon- sible for the gardens and dairy. Those employed in the ambulance service were nurses and thus responsible for providing care and drugs to patients. The jobs of cooks, accountants, boaters or nurses were the most popular with convicts because they shielded prisoners from arduous work and brought them into contact with foodstuffs and narcotics that they could easily resell on the black market. This was known as la débrouille (resourcefulness), which was fed by ceaseless traffic inside the penitentiary: The relégués stole food or drugs
14 Rapport fait par M. Berrué, inspecteur de 1ère classe des colonies concernant la vérifica- tion du service de M. Chaix, commandant supérieur de la Relégation, à Saint-Jean-du- Maroni, à l’époque du 28 novembre 1917 et explications fournies par ce fonctionnaire sur les résultats de sa vérification, anom H 1873.
15 Note relative aux modifications à apporter à la réglementation du pécule des relégués, Archives départementales de Guyane (adg) IX 70.
16 Appel adressé aux libérés et aux relégués prononcé par le libéré 4ème 1ère Mesclon (10867) lors de la réunion des libérés et des relégués du 20 novembre 1910, anom H 1873. 17 Observations du président du Comité de patronage des libérés, adg IX 71.
It’s very rare that a relégué is requested, merchants [of Saint-Laurent] tell you: I will take one condemned to hard labour in any case [that is to say a transporté], but I do not want to see a relégué in my home.20
Many of the relégués became homeless when they left the prison because they could not find jobs. They were effectively banned from Cayenne, the only place in Guiana where economic activity was sufficient to hire them. This followed the request of the General Council of the colony who refused to allow former transportés or individual relégués to live with the free population of Cayenne. So, they had to remain in Saint-Laurent with former transportés submitted to doublage, who were also banned from Cayenne and required to remain in Saint-Laurent. There, they had to compete with transportés that the prison administration rented at low prices to local businesses or private individuals.
18 Le ministre des Colonies au gouverneur, le 7 mai 1914, adg 1 M 392. dm. 1914. 19 Le ministre des Colonies au gouverneur, le 13 février 1932, adg 1 M 457. dm. 1932. 20 Jean Normand, « Les mystères du bagne », in Police Magazine 45 (1931), 4.
The majority of jobs were therefore held by current transportés and very few relégués or former transportés succeded in living decently. In addition, the handful of marriages established between free women and former convicts were considered by the governor as a real threat. Even free, the convicts were regarded as dangerous individuals who should not reproduce because they could “contaminate” their children and the entire colony. Even the colonial society was not made for them, and by the 1930s the governor considered it necessary to stop sending convicts to French Guiana:
The former convicts…live in the cities and contract free unions. They then produce a large number of children. This creates a mixed race which originates from a physically and morally degenerated element. This is eugenics in reverse. It is unworthy of the colonizer and the convict.21
Ultimately, the experiment of integrating former convicts (whether relégués or transportés) into the colony as a labour force after their release from prison was regarded as such a failure, that the governor decided in 1935, with the help of the Salvation Army, to organize their repatriation to metropolitan France or to their original colonies. The other – but in no way more successful – hope of penal colonization was based on land grants, which required released convicts to work independently rather than as employees. The individual relégués were permitted from 1890 to settle on land grants in Saint-Laurent but they had to pay a rental rate of twelve francs per year. Their only obligation was to build within the first six months a dwelling “with the best guarantee of hygiene and safety possible.”22 The major- ity of the individual relégués settled on land grants within a radius of five to six kilometres from Saint-Laurent. However, because so many were remanded to prison, or escaped, the number of individual relégués who actually developed their land grants scarcely rose to four by 1896. Admission to individual relega- tion was rarely permitted by the prison administration until the early twenti- eth century. But orders were then issued by the Colonial Office to increase the numbers of potentially redeemed prisoners: from 677 in 1912 they reached
21 Réponse du gouverneur de la Guyane au rapport de Monsieur l’inspecteur des colonies, chef de mission, concernant le projet de loi portant réforme de la peine des travaux forcés et du régime de la relégation. Conséquences éventuelles pour l’organisation et la réparti- tion du personnel pénal, le 12 juin 1938, anom H 1877. 22 Modifications demandées par les colonies pénitentiaires de la Guyane et de la Nouvelle Calédonie, aux dispositions du décret du 18 janvier 1895 sur le régime des concessions à accorder aux condamnés aux travaux forcés, anom H 1240.
826 in 1914. Then the number droped sharply after the First World War to reach 400 annually. To overcome this failure, the decree of May 8, 1899 authorized the gradual sale by the governor of land grants to the collective relégués of good conduct and to the individual relégués, if they paid a bond not less than one hundred francs. For the first seven years, concessionaires or their beneficiaries (if they were married or if they had children) had to pay an annual rent with the rate per hectare per year between 10 and 20 francs for agricultural or industrial con- cessions. Each concessionaire received an initial delivery of non-renewable agricultural tools, bedding and clothing and a food ration for six months for an agricultural concession and for three months for an industrial concession. In exchange, he was expected to cultivate at least half of his allotted land during the first year of his installation and the rest during the second year; otherwise, he would be returned to the penitentiary. Concessions could also be revoked for any act that resulted in criminal sentences or correctional penalties, for misconduct, insubordination, escape or attempted escape and for non-pay- ment of the rent. The concession only became final for the collective relégué after seven years provided he had been ranked in the same time to individual relegation. To cope with the needs of concessionaires, in 1899 the prison administration built around the prison of Saint-Jean eighteen dwellings but most of the effort was concentrated around Saint Louis, which became a cen- tre of concessionaires. However, this experiment never succeeded because the land of Saint Louis was too infertile, and malaria and yellow fever resulted in a very high mortality rate among concessionaires.23 The centre of Saint Louis concessionaires was abandoned in 1908 and concessions provided to relégués became completely marginal in the colony after that date.
Sociology of the Relégués
The matriculation registers kept at the anom identify 17,375 registered relégués in the penitentiary of Saint-Jean. Based on a survey of nearly 15,015 of them,24 the sociological profile indicates a man with an average age of
23 Rapport fait par M. Ferlande, Inspecteur de 3ème classe des colonies, concernant la véri- fication du service de M. Lhurre, commandant de pénitencier de 1ère classe à Saint-Jean- du-Maroni, à l’époque du 20 au 27 mai 1901 et explications fournies par cet agent sur les résultats de sa vérification, le 27 avril 1901, anom H 1871. 24 Nearly 2,360 relégués (or 14% of total) are not recognized because of absence of informa- tion in the records or because of the state out of use of some of them. Jean-Lucien
32 years, condemned in an urban centre, and employed as a worker or a farm labourer. One fifth of the relégués were natives from Paris and the surrounding areas and the industrialized Northern part of the country (12,75% from the depart- ment of Seine, 4,35% from Seine Inférieure and 3,80% from the Nord). Relegation was primarily designed to punish vagrants and individuals without homes: half of the metropolitan condemned to relegation were homeless at the time of their arrest (50.59%) and those who reported a residence at their arrest hailed from the department of Seine (33.43%), Seine Inférieure (5.29%), Bouches du Rhône (5.08%) and Nord (4.59%). Relegation was decided mainly by correctional courts (83.56% of total sentences at relegation) and the most frequent offence covered by relegation was simple theft, representing more than half of the sentences to relegation (55.23%). Other offences included vio- lations of residential banning orders (7.98% of total relegation sentences), vagrancy (7.71%), breach of trust (3.02%) and frauds (4.77%). Together, the total of simple theft offences, infringement of banning orders, abuse of trust, fraud and vagrancy represented nearly 80.53% of total relegation sentences. For the most part, the relégués had the profile of workers with low or no qualifications. The workforce of the relégués was, in fact, composed mainly of agricultural labourers, unskilled workers or vagabonds without a profession. Judging from figures kept in Rapport[s] sur la marche générale de la relégation from 1888 to 1893, just under half of the number of convicts (47.1%) consisted of farmers and unskilled labourers. By analysing the occupations self-reported by the relégués at the depot for prisoners of Saint-Martin-de-Ré before their transport to French Guiana, the proportion appears much the same: at the time of the convoy of April 3, 1928, for example, 48.07% were cultivators, labourers or unemployed.25 The educational level of the convicts reveals that over half of them could be considered functionally illiterate, since 21% could not read or write, 10% could read only, and 28% claimed they could read and write but could not count. The society of the relégués was very hierarchical and characterized by sig- nificant violence. During the day, the relégués were required to obey the orders of prison officers but once work ended, the true hierarchy of the prison appeared. This hierarchy was organized by cell block, that is to say each of the
Sanchez, “Les relégués internés au pénitencier de Saint-Jean-du-Maroni,” Criminocorpus [Online] published September 24, 2013, consulted April 22, 2014,
26 Le gouverneur au ministre des Colonies, le 31 décembre 1907, anom H 1862. 27 Le directeur de l’administration pénitentiaire, 1904, anom H 2072.
These men, intermediaries between prison authorities and those below them, were despised because their role made them the cause of all the accusations and most traffic in the penitentiary. The position of porte-clefs allowed these men to avoid hard labour and to rapidly advance to the status of individual relegation. Within the complex hierarchy of the colonial prison system, the relégués were considered the lowest category of the prison, as outcasts. The transportés, condemned for crime to hard labour, were considered as durs (tough people), criminals who have often committed a single violent crime such as murder. Conversely, a relégué was seen as a recidivist petty thief, a petty delinquent who could not be compared to a transporté. In most stories of convicts, the relégués are mentioned as “repeat offenders” and not as convicts. As one of the best-known narrators of French colonial prison life, Henri Charriere, explains it:
Saint-Martin de Ré is full of prisoners. Two very different categories, eight hundred or one thousand convicts and nine hundred relégués. To be a convict, you must have done something bad, or at least, have been accused of committing a big crime… The relégué is different. Three to seven convictions and one man can be relegated. It is true that they are all incorrigible thieves and we understand that society ought to defend itself. However, it is shameful for a civilized people to have the penalty of relegation.28
However, many relégués refused the regime of the prison and hard labour imposed on them by the officers of prison. Those who imagined that collective relegation should prepare them for individual relegation discovered that their real sentence proved to be a sentence of hard labour for life. Many of them, especially among those newly arrived in the colony, were particularly disap- pointed with their fate because they thought they would be free in the colony. Therefore, they frequently rebelled or sought to escape. This was especially true in the early years of the construction of the prison of Saint-Jean, from 1887 to 1900, when the mortality rate was very high: in 1887 it reached 14.3% of work- force, and 9.87% in 1888, 20.47% in 1889 and 12.78% in 1890.29 From 1888 to 1890, punishment for laziness, improprieties, insults, fights, insolence and refusal to work represented more than half (51.52%) of all punishments
28 Henri Charrière, Papillon (Paris, 1969), 57. 29 Instructions pour l’inspecteur envoyé en mission à la Guyane française, le 9 novembre 1893, anom H 1855.
The Prison Staff
Discipline within the prison was provided by the porte-clefs, by the tirailleurs Sénégalais and by military prison guards. The organization of the corps of mili- tary prison guards was fixed by a decree of November 20, 1867 and prison authorities recruited them from among non-commissioned officers of the army or among soldiers and sailors with at least three years of service.31 Prison guards did not receive any special training: they needed only to sign their commitment and they were then sent directly to the penitentiaries of French Guiana. Over time, the quality of recruitment of military prison guards continued to deteriorate and, having difficulty in recruiting sufficient num- bers, the Ministry of the Colonies was not especially demanding regarding their recruitment. Before 1906, the guards were mostly recruited from the corps of the ncos of the army but after this date the prison mostly engaged common soldiers, as the following chart indicates:
30 Le gouverneur au ministre des Colonies, le 25 juin 1931, anom H 2023. 31 Corps des surveillants militaires, Inspection générale de 1887, Rapport d’ensemble, anom H 1215.
Military guards nco Corporals Soldiers Hired before December 31, 1906 85 46 9 Recruited after 1906 until 1909 27 39 200
This sub-classification between nco, corporals and soldiers is problematic however because, in addition to their role as guards, these men also served as police officers and thus were required to write regular reports. However, because of low literacy levels, more than a few were incapable of writing any- thing. For instance, in 1933, the superior commander of relegation complained that of the fifty prison guards present in the penitentiary of Saint-Jean and its sub-camps, only a dozen demonstrated “the degree of primary culture and intellectual capacity needed to provide a service involving maintenance of records.”32 Superior commanders of relegation, as well as the directors of prison and the governors, regularly bemoaned the lack of preparation of the corps of prison guards and demanded changes in their recruitment. They made fre- quent requests for them to be recruited directly into the corps of the ncos of the army. Nevertheless, the Ministry of the Colonies opposed such reform because this would impose an increase in their salaries, normally kept quite low: in 1931, a prison guard first class earned 1,000 francs a month and a prison guard from the third class earned just 847 francs.33 These low salaries coupled with the harsh climate of French Guiana hardly encouraged the best elements of the corps of non-commissioned officers of the army to seek employment in the penal colony. All too often the prison administration recruited bad ele- ments and found itself obliged to punish them or expel them quickly. The lack of training and illiteracy among the prison guards had important implications in the penitentiaries because they supervised the relégués in their work and managed the various workshops of Saint-Jean (work, interior, culture and ambulance). The decree of November 20, 1867 also stipulated that the number of military prison guards present within penitentiaries should be equivalent to 4% of the total number of convicts. In reality, however, this figure oscillated constantly around 2% throughout the life of the prison because of absences due to illness or for long holidays in the metropolis.34 This frequent shortage of staff increased the burdens for the prison guards who remained,
32 Dépôt de la Relégation, Rapport annuel du 1er janvier au 31 décembre 1933, anom H 5143. 33 Note pour le Contrôleur Général de l’Armée, Chef du Cabinet du Ministre, le 23 août 1919, anom H 2072. 34 Rapport de l’inspecteur Ferlande sur le pénitencier de Saint-Jean, le 26 mars 1901, anom H 1854.
A Disputed Sovereignty
The powers of the director of prison were established by a decree of February 16, 1878. Appointed by order of the President of the French Republic, the direc- tor oversaw “under the orders of the governor” the services of the prison administration in French Guiana.35 Nevertheless, this dependence on metro- politan and local colonial authority was more apparent than real, as the direc- tor of the prisons retained considerable autonomy vis-à-vis the governor. This autonomy rested first and foremost on a fact of geography: no road connected the colonial capital of Cayenne to Saint-Laurent, nearly 300 kilometers distant across impassable terrain. It took twenty-four hours of sailing to travel from Cayenne to the prison territory on the Western border, and mail could take eight to ten days to reach its destination. The governor then, who resided in Cayenne, had no way of knowing the daily situation of the prison, nor could he effectively supervise its administration. Only the director of prison maintained sufficiently precise knowledge of the penal system’s services and knew the exact situation of his vast administration; only he could take all appropriate decisions. The directorship’s powers within his penal empire were extensive: he pre- pared and submitted to the governor the regulations of his administration, organized convict labour, distributed land grants to the relégués, and main- tained discipline in penitentiaries. He was personally responsible for all acts of his administration, had control over all personnel under his command and led all offices and penitentiaries. He countersigned the orders and decisions of the governor for his administration. Much like the internal life of the prison itself, the larger prison administra- tion was extraordinarily hierarchical. An assistant director appointed by the Minister of Colonies – rather than the director himself – was responsible for monitoring the general service of the prison administration and worked imme- diately under the prison director, whom he could assist or replace if the latter was absent from his post or otherwise unable to carry out his duties. The prison administration in Maroni was divided into three offices: the office of the secretariat and finance, the office of prison guards and penal
35 Ministère des Colonies, Administration pénitentiaire coloniale, Guide pratique (Melun, 1911), 45.
36 Le ministre des Colonies au gouverneur, le 20 janvier 1914, adg 1 M 391. dm. 1913.
37 Emmanuelle Sibeud, « L’administration coloniale », in Vincent Duclerc, Christophe Prochasson, eds, Dictionnaire critique de la République (Paris, 2002), 625. 38 Le gouverneur au ministre des Colonies, le 3 septembre 1927, anom H 2072.
We must therefore consider that requests from Local Government, inspired by the wishes of the General Council, have as their aim to assure that budget resources and prison labour are distributed to people whose morals and tendencies are distinct from those of European civilization. In their hands, these policy instruments will naturally be employed, to avoid effort or to enhance profit, but not to colonize the territory in the sense understood by the European, that is to say to systematically subdue nature in the territory.39
Despite the best efforts of local colonists to wrest away his power, the director of prison remained independent in his territory throughout the penal colony’s existence. This situation ultimately created a double colonization of French Guiana. The local colonial state saw its executive power subdivided into two separate entities: the governor on one side and the director of prison on the other. Within the same colony a dual system coexisted – a civilian power and a military style administration. This dual sovereignty was reinforced in practice by the separation of the colony into two separate (and remote) territories: the colony itself and the prison territory of Maroni, where the penal authority’s word was law. These factors, peculiar to French Guiana, increased the structural imbal- ances that characterized the organization of the State within colonies. The colonial state, as noted by Emmanuelle Saada,40 is characterized by an essen- tial feature due to the remoteness of the metropolis and thus limited control exercised by the Minister of the Colonies. Moreover, the direction of the Ministry of colonies was particularly unstable because of frequent changes of
39 L’inspecteur de 1ère classe des colonies Berrué au ministre des Colonies, le 3 février 1918, anom H 1863. 40 Emmanuelle Saada, La « question des métis » dans les colonies françaises: socio-histoire d’une catégorie juridique (Indochine et autres territoires de l’Empire français; années 1890-années 1950), thèse de doctorat de Sciences Sociales (Paris, 2001), 226–228.
Conclusion
Beginning in 1923, the journalist Albert Londres prepared a series of articles on the prison in French Guiana for the metropolitan newspaper, Le Petit Parisien. The reporter managed to go wherever he wanted inside the prison and described the plight of convicts in French Guiana. Following him, many popu- lar “true crime” magazines, such as Detective or Police Magazine, published exposés of prison life in the colony and the metropolitan public became sensi- tized to an institution that writers portrayed as cruel and anachronistic. At the same time, in 1933 the Salvation Army established a branch in French Guiana to help convicts released from prison and relieve their plight of pover- ty.41 The captain of the Salvation Army in French Guiana, Charles Péan, orga- nized many conferences in metropolitan France where he called for the abolition of the prison. The same message was echoed by the deputy of French Guiana, Gaston Monnerville, who struggled in Parliament for the abolition of the prison and for the repatriation of all convicts. His fight succeeded with the arrival of the Front Populaire (Popular Front) in 1936, when Leon Blum decided to abolish the prison and issued a decree in June 1938 abolishing penal trans- portation to French Guiana. Subsequently, the transportés would serve their
41 Danielle Donet-Vincent, De soleil et de silences: histoire des bagnes de Guyane, op. cit., 343.
42 Rapport fait par M. Perreau, professeur des facultés de droit, attaché à la mission d’inspection des colonies, concernant le service de M. le médecin lieutenant colonel Sainz, directeur des services pénitentiaires coloniaux, à la date du 30 mars 1946 et explica- tions fournies par cet officier supérieur, anom H 1877. 43 Rapport sur le rapatriement des gens ayant appartenu à la catégorie pénale (libérés, rele- vés de la relégation, réhabilités et déportés), le 9 mai 1946, Archives diplomatiques P 4355.
44 Charles Lucas, La transportation pénale ou la politique du débarras. Rapport verbal à l’occasion de la notice publiée par le ministère de la Marine sur la Guyane et la Nouvelle- Calédonie, séance du 16 février 1878, extrait du compte-rendu de l’Académie des Sciences morales et politiques rédigé par M. Charles Vergé, sous la direction de M. le Secrétaire perpé- tuel de l’Académie (Orléans, 1878). 45 Frederick Cooper, Le colonialisme en question. Théorie, connaissance et histoire (Paris, 2010), 41.
Stacey Hynd
The aims of prison labour are to: 1. Make [the African] amenable to disci- pline, 2. To develop habits of industry, and 3. To rehabilitate him.1 Prisons Commissioner, Southern Rhodesia, 1953
In 1937 Charles Clifton Roberts, a former magistrate and attorney-general in Nyasaland and Uganda, argued in his reformist critique of the colonial justice system that “prison labour is a weapon of immense value in the campaign against crime.”2 Roberts, like many other colonial officials, viewed productive labour as the key to creating a modern African citizen and developing the continent. The question is what the true “value” of prison labour was to colonial African states: was it merely conceptualized in economic terms, or did it also have an acknowl- edged penal and political value? As Lichtenstein argues for the American South, convict labour operated “as a system of labour recruitment, control and exploita- tion particularly suited to the political economy of a post-emancipation society,” being in effect “a system of forced labour in an age of emancipation.”3 In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Africa was experiencing its own aboli- tion of slavery, but within a context of colonization and coercion by European powers. The quest of European governments to define a progressive mission for themselves in the era of high imperialism led to a focus on free labour as the basic test of the responsible colonizer. But a legal dichotomy of “free” and “forced” labour offered little guidance to the daily practice of colonial administration and left obscured the ambiguous terrain in which colonial governments exercised power over the labour of Africans.4 With African labour key to the establishment and development of colonial states, it soon became clear that compulsory
1 Southern Rhodesia, Report of the Secretary, Department of Justice for the Year 1951 (Salisbury, 1952). 2 Charles Clifton Roberts, Tangled Justice: Some Reasons for a Change of Policy in Africa (London, 1937), 117. 3 Alex Lichtenstein, Twice the Work of Free Labour: The Political Economy of Convict Labour in the New South (New York, 1996), 3. 4 Frederick Cooper, Decolonization and African Society: The Labour Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge, 1996), 23.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004285026_011
5 See Taylor Sherman, “The Tensions of Colonial Punishment: Perspectives on Recent Developments in the Study of Coercive Networks in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean,” History Compass 7 (2009), 659–77; recent special editions of the Journal of Southern African Studies (2011) and International Journal of African Historical Studies (2012). 6 David Killingray, “Punishment to Fit the Crime? Penal Policy and Practice in British Colonial Africa,” in Florence Bernault, ed., Enfermement, Prison et Châtiments, Enfermement, Prison et Châtiments en Afrique: du 19e siècle à Nos Jours (Paris, 1999), 181–204 and “The Maintenance of Law and Order in British Colonial Africa,” African Affairs 85 (1986), 411–37; Simon Coldham, “Crime and Punishment in British Colonial Africa,” Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin, 58 (1991), 57–66. 7 Florence Bernault, “De l’Afrique ouverte à l’Afrique fermée: comprendre l’histoire des réclu- sions continentales,” in Florence Bernault, Enfermement, Prison et Châtiments, 40; Daniel Branch, “Imprisonment and Colonialism in Kenya, c.1930–52: Escaping the Colonial Archipelago,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 38 (2005), 239–66; Stacey Hynd, “Law, Violence and Penal Reform: State Responses to Crime and Disorder in Colonial Malawi, c.1900–59,” Journal of Southern African Studies 37 (2011), 431–47. 8 Bernault, “De l’Afrique ouverte,” 45–6 and “The Shadow of Rule: Colonial Power and Modern Punishment in Africa,” in Frank Dikötter and Mark Brown eds., Cultures of Confinement: A History of the Prison in Africa, Asia and Latin America (Ithaca, 2007), 72.
9 T.M. Corry, Prison Labour in South Africa (Cape Town, 1978); Dirk van Zyl Smit & Frieder Dünkel, Prison Labour: Salvation or Slavery? International Perspectives (Aldershot, 1990); William H. Worger, “Industrialists and the State in the us South and South Africa, 1870–1930,” Journal of Southern African Studies 30 (2004): 63–86. 10 See Megan Vaughan, “Africa and the Birth of the Modern World,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 16 (2006), 143–62. 11 Frederic Lugard, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (Edinburgh, 1923).
Political and Moral Economies of Labour in British Sub-Saharan Africa
From the outset, African labour was crucial to the establishment of colonial control but in the early stages of colonization the judicial and penal infrastructure
12 See John Darwin, The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World System, 1870–1970 (Cambridge, 2009). 13 Uganda Protectorate, Annual Report of the Uganda Prisons during the Year ending December 1944 (Entebbe, 1945). 14 Bernault, “De l’Afrique ouverte,” 45–7.
15 See John Lonsdale, “The European Scramble and Conquest in African History,” in R. Oliver and G.N. Sanderson, eds., Cambridge History of Africa, vol. vi (Cambridge, 1985), 680–766. 16 See Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale, Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa (London, 1992). 17 See Howard Temperley, British Anti-Slavery, 1833–1870 (Columbia, 1972; Suzanne Miers, Britain and the Ending of the Slave Trade (New York, 1975); Martin A. Klein, ed., Breaking the Chains: Slavery, Bondage and Emancipation in Modern Africa (Madison, 1993); Paul Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge, 1983). 18 Suzanne Miers and Martin A. Klein, “Introduction,” in Suzanne Miers and Martin A. Klein, eds., Slavery and Colonial Rule in Africa (Portland, 1999), 2. 19 Frederick Cooper, “Conditions Analogous to Slavery: Imperialism and Free Labour Ideology in Africa,” in Frederick Cooper, Thomas C. Holt, and Rebecca J. Scott, eds., Beyond Slavery: Explorations of Race, Labour and Citizenship in Post-Emancipation Societies (Chapel Hill, 2000), 107–49. 20 Suzanne Miers and Richard Roberts, “Introduction – The End of Slavery in Africa,” in Suzanne Miers and Richard Roberts, eds., The End of Slavery in Africa (Madison, 1988), 42–3.
21 See Lugard, The Dual Mandate, 410–4. 22 Kwabena Opare Akurang-Parry, “Colonial Forced Labour Policies for Road-building in Southern Ghana and International Forced Labour Pressures, 1900–40,” African Economic History 28 (2000), 1–25; Forced Labour in British East Africa, 1913, Anti-Slavery Society Papers, Brit.Emp.s.22 G132, Rhodes House Library, Oxford [rhl]; David Killingray, “Labour Exploitation for Military Campaigns in British Colonial Africa, 1870–1945,” Journal of Contemporary History 24 (1989), 483–501. 23 Antony Clayton and Donald Savage, Government and Labour in Kenya, 1895–1963 (London, 1974); Bill Freund, The African Worker (Cambridge, 1988). 24 Roger G. Thomas, “Forced Labour in British West Africa: The Case of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast, 1906–27,” The Journal of African History 14 (1973), 79–103; Bill Freund, Capital and Labour in the Nigerian Tin Mines (Harlow, 1981), 73–110. 25 See “How to Make the Lazy Nigger Work,” Forced Labour in British East Africa, 1913, Anti- Slavery Society Papers, Brit.Emp.s.22 G132, rhl. 26 Charles van Onselen, Chibaro: African Mine Labour in Southern Rhodesia (London, 1976); Ian Phimister, An Economic and Social History of Zimbabwe, 1890–1948 (Harlow, 1988), 52–7. 27 See Opolot Okia, “The Northey Forced Labour Crisis, 1920–1: A Symptomatic Reading,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 41 (2008), 263–93. 28 Clayton and Savage, Government and Labour, 112–17.
29 Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale “Coping with the Contradictions: The Development of the Colonial State in Kenya, 1895–1914,” The Journal of African History 20 (1979), 487–505. 30 Miers, Slavery in the Twentieth Century, 140. On the discourses of liberal imperialism see Stephen Howe, Anticolonialism in British Politics: The Left and the End of Empire, 1918–64 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997); Andrew S. Thompson, “The Language of Imperialism and the Meanings of Empire: Imperial Discourse in British Politics, 1895–1914,” Journal of British Studies 36 (1997), 147–77. 31 Clayton and Savage, Government and Labour, 11. 32 Bernault, “De l’Afrique ouverte,” 45–6; Felix Ekechi, Tradition and Transformation in Eastern Nigeria. A Socio-political History of Owerri and its Hinterland, 1902–47 (Kent, 1989), 149–50.
African workers and bind them to their contracts.33 The 1913 Report of the Native Labour Commission in Kenya certainly shows the range of labour coer- cion in that territory, with press-ganging, beatings and compulsory recruit- ment providing “back-up” to legal coercion and taxation.34 Taken together, the slow abolition of slavery, forced and “compulsory labour,” and widespread net- works of labour coercion all limited colonial states’ requirements for convict labour during the early stages of colonization.
“Penal Labour” to “Prison Labour”: Convict Labour and the Establishment of Colonial Rule
In the early years of colonialism in Africa, Britain’s presence was confined to the Cape region of South Africa and coastal West Africa, particularly around the Gold Coast, Senegambia and Lagos. In the early 1780s, in the wake of American independence cutting off previous routes for transportation, Britain had sent a small number of convicts from English courts to the Gold Coast and Senegambia as soldiers and agricultural labourers. However, the failure of these settlements and gross immorality and crime in convict-staffed forts led to public scandal and the collapse of this venture, with transportation switched to the newly discovered Botany Bay.35 In the nineteenth century, legal and penal systems in British Africa tended to be directly imported from the metro- pole, and then adapted in situ to local conditions through pragmatism and neglect rather than policy. Colonial rule centred on coastal trade forts which also acted as gaols. These early gaols were custodial institutions, primarily holding debtors and thieves. The archival record reveals that by the 1850s, pris- oner chain-gangs were working on the roads in the Gold Coast.36 In the 1860s, Colonial Office circulars requested that colonial prisons be placed on the same basis as English gaols: the separate system, a minimum diet and penal labour.37 These structures quickly proved unworkable: Africans were held in communal cells, and local authorities preferred to put Africans into productive labour
33 David M. Anderson, “Master and Servant Legislation in Colonial Kenya,” The Journal of African History 41 (2000), 459–85. 34 Protectorate and Colony of Kenya, Report of the Native Labour Commission 1912–13 (Nairobi, 1914). 35 Emma Christopher, A Merciless Place: The Lost Story of Britain’s Convict Disaster in Africa (Oxford, 2011). See Hamish Maxwell-Stewart’s chapter in this volume. 36 Government of the Gold Coast, Blue Book 1850 (Accra, 1850). 37 See Government of the Gold Coast, Prisons Ordinance, 1876.
Reform/Deterrence, Production/Rehabilitation, Industry/Agriculture?
The Changing Role and Practice of Prison Labour in Inter-War Africa By the early twentieth century, British rule had expanded across Africa. As colonial states developed, so too did their legal and penal systems. Imprisonment was a major weapon of colonial control: between 1:300 and 1:500 Africans were imprisoned in 1930–50s compared with less than 1:2000 in Britain, and sentences were routinely heavier than those handed down for
38 Robert B. Seidman, “The Ghana Prison System: An Historical Perspective,” in Alan Milner, ed., African Penal Systems, (London, 1969), 437. 39 Government of the Gold Coast, Report of the Prisons Department for the Year 1902 (Accra, 1903). 40 Desptach No 119, 28 March 1899, Ag Govr to Sec/State adm 1/498, Public Records and Archives Administration Department, Accra, Ghana [praad]. 41 Gold Coast, Report of Prisons Department 1902. 42 Coldham, “Crime and Punishment in British Colonial Africa,” 57–66. 43 Bernault, “De l’Afrique ouverte,” 40.
44 Bernault, “The Shadow of Rule,” 62. 45 Bernault, “De l’Afrique ouverte,” 15–64. 46 See, for example, Tanganyika Territory, Prisons Ordinance of 1933. 47 Killingray, “Punishment to Fit the Crime?” 191. 48 Clayton and Savage, Government and Labour in Kenya, 40; Colonial Office to Archdeacon of Kavirondo, January 1931, Prison Labour, CO 533/406/7, National Archives, Kew [tna]. 49 Archdeacon W.E. Owen to Ramsay MacDonald, 3 January 1931, CO 533/406/7, tna.
50 Tanganyika Territory, Annual Report on the Administration of Prisons for the Year ending December 1930 to 1938 (Dar es Salaam: Government Printer, 1931 to 1939). 51 See Nigeria, Annual Report on the Treatment of Offenders, 1953–4 (Lagos: Government Printer, 1954). 52 Southern Rhodesia, Justice Report 1943. 53 See Nigeria, Southern Rhodesia, Tanganyika and Uganda Annual Prison Reports. 54 Bernault, “De l’Afrique ouverte,” 45–6. 55 See Sessional Paper XI Legislative Council 1920–1 ADM 14/16, praad; Bernault, “De l’Afrique ouverte,” 15–64. 56 Gold Coast, Prisons Report, 1908. 57 Gold Coast, Prisons Report, 1906. 58 Gold Coast, Prisons Report, 1910, 1918–19.
59 Seidman, “The Ghana Prison System,” 443. 60 Sessional Paper VIII Leg Co 1919–20, ADM 14/15, praad. 61 Alexander Paterson, Report on a Visit to the Prisons of Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, Aden and Somaliland (Morija, 1944), 27. 62 Frederick G. Guggisberg, The Gold Coast: A Review of the Events of 1920–1926 and the Prospects of 1927–28 (Accra, 1927), 310.
Book report to London confirmed that prisons were “gradually emerging from a system of negative prevention to one of training and reformation.”63 The major focus on imprisonment was thus ostensibly shifted from corporeal pun- ishment to individual reform through the teaching of a trade, creating eco- nomically productive citizen-subjects. Although Seidman argues that this shift occurred “not from any clearly articulated concept of penology but to explain what was being done in fact,” it can equally be read as part of a larger re-orien- tation of colonial penology, aiming to render the use of convict labour palat- able to metropolitan and international scrutiny.64 Colonial labour policies in the inter-war years were shaped within the wider field of imperial politics. The inter-war period saw the emergence of a new “humanitarian imperialism,” particularly with the establishment of the League of Nations in 1919.65 The League of Nations and its International Labour Organization (ilo) pushed labour polices to the forefront of imperial dis- courses across European empires.66 With the 1926 Slavery Convention pro- scribing all forms of slavery, humanitarian action expanded to tackle a range of coercive labour practices deemed “analogous to slavery,” and forced labour – including convict labour – became the new moral battleground.67 In 1929 the ilo circulated proposals for an international Forced Labour Convention to secure new standards of treatment for colonial labour, but of the European imperial powers only Britain supported the measure, as she had in effect already ended the practice in 1921.68 Through international sanc- tions against forced labour, the British government saw the opportunity to seize the moral high-ground against France, Portugal and Belgium, all of whom used
63 Gold Coast, Blue Book, 1928–9. 64 Governor Rodger to Secretary of State, 7 March 1904, ADM 1/506, praad. 65 Michael D. Callahan, Mandates and Empire: The League of Nations and Africa, 1914–31 (Brighton, 1999); Joanna Lewis, Empire State Building: War and Welfare in Kenya, 1925–52 (Athens, Ohio, 2001); Michael Barnett, Empires of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Ithaca, 2013). 66 Suzanne Miers, “Slavery and the Slave Trade as International Issues, 1890–1939,” in Suzanne Miers and Martin A. Klein, eds., Slavery and Colonial Rule in Africa (Portland, 1999), 16–37; Kevin Grant, A Civilized Savagery – Britain and the New Slaveries in Africa 1884–1926 (London, 2005), 135–66; Amalia Ribi, Humanitarian Imperialism: The Politics of Anti-Slavery Activism in the Inter-war Years (University of Oxford, D Phil thesis, 2008). 67 League of Nations, Slavery Convention of 1926,
69 France officially allowed the use of forced labour until 1937, the Belgian Congo used “educational” enforced crop growing until the 1950 and Portugal only abandoned forced labour in 1960s after Ghana complained to the ilo. See Miers and Roberts, “Introduction – The End of Slavery in Africa,” 42–3. 70 Forced Labour Convention – Employment of Convict Labour, CO 323/1170/4, tna; International Labour Organization, Convention Concerning Forced or Compulsory Labour, No 29 of 1930.
75 See Nigeria, Annual Report on the Prisons Department 1929 – Northern Nigeria (Lagos, 1930). 76 Colony of Sierra Leone, Report of the Prisons Department for the Year Ending December 1946 (Freetown, 1947). 77 Gold Coast, Report on the Prisons Department, 1929–30. 78 See Nigeria, Annual Report on the Prisons Department 1946. 79 Record of Interview with Colonel Cavanaugh, Superintendent of Prisons, Gold Coast, March 1938 cpac 11, Colonial Penal Advisory Committee Papers Distributed 1937–40, CO 912/3, tna. 80 Tanganyika, Prisons Report, 1936.
81 Northern Rhodesia, Central Prison Service Annual Report 1932. 82 Gold Coast, Report on the Prisons, 1936–7. 83 Report on the Question of Imprisonment in Tanganyika Territory, 1932, s.19, CO 691/126/11, tna. 84 Ibid. 85 See Report on Morogoro Prison, 20 May 1925, 7667, Tanzanian National Archives; Problems of the Relation between Prison Conditions and Normal Standards of Living 1953–4, CO 859/379, tna; Malcolm Hailey, African Survey Revised 1956 (London: Oxford University Press, 1957), 625. 86 Great Britain, Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Administration of Justice in Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika Territory in Criminal Matters (London, 1934), 58. 87 George Simeon Mwase, Strike a Blow and Die: The Story of the Chilembwe Uprising (London, 1975), 116.
the feeling is still prevalent, especially among those in control of the smaller prisons, that punishment must be deterrent, that the offender must not be allowed to have too good a time, that he must be made to realize that he has got to carry out some task, even if that task should entail a form of labour which is of little practical value.89
The 1934 Tanganyika Prisons report similarly noted that “there is little doubt that in time the employment of convicts on hard labour – for example in the stone quarries at Tanga and Dar es Salaam – will act as a deterrent to the crimi- nal population of these towns.”90 Reform was also limited by financial con- straints, with Prisons Departments generally being treated as the “Cinderella service” of colonial administrations.91 Imperial parsimony dictated that colo- nies were to be self-financing wherever possible, and for Prisons Departments this entailed keeping the costs of imprisonment low. This certainly explains why Prison Departments prioritized labour for their own maintenance and expansion requirements, and channelled African labour into the production of foodstuffs for rations where possible.92 Agriculture had always been one of the main occupations for African con- vict labour, with prisons gardens providing staple grains and vegetables for prison rations and surpluses sold on for profit. But with the growth of fears about the “detribalization” of African populations, as a result of the impact of urbanization and colonial cultures in 1920-30s, the role of prison agriculture took on a new political dimension. Many senior prisons officials asserted that
88 Killingray, “Punishment to Fit the Crime?” 186; J.W. Hamilton, “Crime and Punishment,” West African Affairs 19 (Accra, 1953), 10; Gold Coast, Report of Prisons Department 1944–5. 89 Roberts, Tangled Justice, 114. 90 Tanganyika, Annual Report on the Administration of Prisons 1934. 91 Hamilton, “Crime and Punishment,” 13; Treatment of Offenders Sub-Committee Draft Minutes 21 December 1937, Colonial Penal Advisory Committee Papers Distributed 1937–40, CO 912/3, tna. 92 Uganda Protectorate, Prisons Report, 1935.
93 Tanganyika, Annual Report on the Administration of Prisons, 1936. 94 Government of Northern Rhodesia, Central Prison Service Annual Reports 1934, 1936. 95 Prison Labour Camps in Colonies, 1935, CO 323/1344/3, tna. 96 Circular 213/53, Treatment of Offenders Sub-Committee Circulars 1947–59, CO 912/2, tna. 97 Tanganyika Territory, Prisons Ordinance of 1933, s. 87. 98 Tanganyika Territory, Annual Prisons Reports, 1936–62.
99 Memorandum A. Paterson to Prisons Commission, Whitehall, 31 October 1934, Prison Labour Camps in Colonies, 1935, CO 323/1344/3, tna; Circular 213/53, Treatment of Offenders Sub-Committee Circulars 1947–59, CO 912/2, tna. 100 Governor Kennedy to Lord Moyne, 10 February 1948, Colonial Penal Administration Committee 192, CO 912/5, tna. 101 Memorandum from Governor of Uganda, Colonial Penal Advisory Papers Distributed 1941, CO 912/4, tna. 102 Colony and Protectorate of Kenya, Detention Camps Ordinance, 1925, 3 December 1925; Daniel Branch, “Imprisonment and Colonialism in Kenya”; James S. Read, “Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania,” in Alan Milner, ed., African Penal Systems (London, 1969), 91–164. 103 Colonial Office to Archdeacon of Kavirondo, January 1931, Prison Labour, CO 533/406/7, tna. 104 Memorandum from Governor of Kenya, 23 March 1941, Colonial Penal Advisory Committee Papers Distributed 1941, CO 912/4, tna.
Welfare, Development and Work: Metropolitan Universalism and Colonial Governance in Convict Labour
Concerns about labour conditions across the British empire grew in response to the West Indian strikes in 1937, propelling a move towards a new “welfaris- tic,” interventionist, developmental model of colonialism.105 Metropolitan influence on penal policy increased after 1939, particularly with the establish- ment of the Colonial Office’s Advisory Committee on the Treatment of Offenders (toc), which espoused a universal reformist model for colonial penality.106 The toc asserted that colonial governments were still facing “the problem of how to keep short term prisoners out of prison by their employ- ment on compulsory labour with the danger of abuse, and without conflict with hmg’s policy towards the ilo Convention.”107 To combat this, the former Home Office Prisons Commissioner Alexander Paterson was sent during the war to survey the prisons of East and West Africa. His report on East Africa concluded that colonial prisons were still commonly regarded “as convenient sources for the supply of free labour.”108 According to Paterson:
hence arose vast workshops where hundreds of prisoners performed mechanical and repetitive operations in the manufacture of strange arti- cles for which there was a market. Thus a thousand Natives might engage in the making of boots for army and police, though on return to their vil- lages they would never see a boot again in their lives. Under such a sys- tem, everything becomes subordinate to the question of profit.109
Paterson also railed against “a more insidious fallacy that lurks behind the employment of prisoners [which] is the conception of their labour as a conve- nience to the more privileged members of the community,” with prisoners being used as unpaid gardeners and servants by senior officials.110 The Second World War temporarily interrupted the toc’s plans for penal reform and brought about a massive recrudescence in labour coercion. Across
105 Miers and Roberts, “Introduction – The End of Slavery in Africa,” 16. 106 See Colonial Office, Report of the Committee on the Treatment of Offenders (London: hmso, 1954). 107 cpac 16, Extra-mural labour and the Geneva Convention on Forced Labour, 22 September 1939, Treatment of Offenders Sub-Committee Circulars 1947–59, CO 912/2, tna. 108 Paterson, Report on a Visit to the Prisons, 6. 109 Ibid., 20–21. 110 Ibid.
Africa, forced labour was reintroduced for military and agricultural purposes, and convict labour was switched to providing support for such endeavours, with the provision of military uniforms and supplies taking up the majority of man hours.111 In the post-war era however, the need to justify imperial rule against anti-colonialism and African nationalism saw the implementation of welfaristic colonialism in British colonies. The post-war era saw the emergence of modern strategies of governance, with colonial regimes becoming intent upon turning Africans into Foucault’s “docile bodies.”112 Whilst previously Africans had been unitized and regarded primarily as part of tribal collectives or representative “types,” prison officials began explicitly noting that “We could make no advancement if we did not regard the prisoner as an individual.”113 All colonial prisons in British Africa were to expand industrial training pro- grammes. So-called “vocational training” to create productive colonial citizens was in line with new post-war conceptualizations of the “African labourer” as an increasingly urbanized, potentially proletarianized working man.114 The emphasis was officially placed on “teaching the Native to do something con- structive and so become a useful member of the community, enabling him to earn a reasonable living and so releasing him from the economic necessity to steal.”115 Even smaller territories like the Gambia, which lacked any real mod- ernized industry, introduced industrial training.116 Following metropolitan precedent, earnings schemes were introduced for prison labour to boost pro- ductivity, replacing the more physical disciplinary techniques of the interwar years. Remission systems were also based on industry and good conduct. However, the prison system remained plagued by underfunding, overcrowd- ing, systemic violence and institutional inertia, with any reform limited at best. As one commentator noted “[o]vercrowding, drabness and enforced idle- ness are the hallmarks are too many of our prisons.”117 Labour played an increasingly significant role in prison discipline as overcrowding increased dramatically in the post-war years, with many prisons at double capacity. For officials, a lack of labour and “the idleness of offenders encourage[d]
111 Killingray, “Labour Exploitation for Military Campaigns.” 112 See Frederick Cooper, “Conflict and Connection: Rethinking Colonial African History,” American Historical Review 99 (1994), 1515–1546. 113 Tanganyika, Annual Report on the Administration of Prisons, 1946. 114 Cooper, Decolonization and African Society, 1–11. See Great Britain, Labour Conditions in East Africa: Report by Major G. St. J. Orde Browne (London, 1946), Colonial Paper No. 193. 115 Southern Rhodesia, Department of Justice Report, 1951. 116 The Gambia, “Annual Report of the Gambia Prisons and the Treatment of Offenders,” 720.13.s.2, rhl. 117 Hamilton, “Crime and Punishment,” 15.
118 Sierra Leone, Report of the Prisons Department 1952; Hynd, “Law, Violence and Penal Reform,” 440. 119 Uganda, Annual Report of the Uganda Prisons 1942. 120 Tanganyika, Annual Report on the Administration of Prisons 1945. 121 Government of the Gold Coast, Report on the Committee on Prisons 1951, Sessional Paper III 1951, cited in Seidman, “Ghanaian Prison System,” 454. 122 Tanganyika, Annual Report on the Administration of Prisons 1942. 123 Uganda, Annual Report of the Uganda Prisons 1942. See James Turner Hodge, Triumph of the Expert: Agrarian Doctrines of Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism (Athens, Ohio, 2007); William Beinart and Lotte Hughes, Environment and Empire (Oxford, 2008). 124 Colonial Office, Treatment of Offenders Memorandum Presented to the Secretary of State for the Colonies (London, 1954); United Nations General Assembly, First United Nations
Conclusion
The study of prison labour can offer the historian a useful lens on the intersec- tion of colonial governance, penality and labour economies, but it is one which requires further study to elucidate fully. A detailed comparative analysis of ter- ritorial and district archives would better reveal the scale and significance of convict labour, and related controversies, as well as substantiating claims as to its significance to colonial economies. From the evidence presented above, it appears that prison labour held political, economic and penal instrumentali- ties within imperial and colonial coercive networks. As Bernault has argued, convict labour played a significant role in the creation of colonial labour econ- omies across British Africa, but its usages and relative importance varied over
Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders Geneva, 22/8–3/9 1955 A/CONF.6/L.17 1 December 1955, 4, Penal Labour-II. 125 Circular 293/1956 – The Employment of Prisoners on Development Schemes, 16 March 1956, Treatment of Offenders Sub-Committee Circulars 1947–59, CO 912/2, tna. 126 Uganda, Prisons Report, 1959. 127 See Caroline Elkins, Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya (London, 2005), 117, 141–2, 224.
128 Bernault, “The Shadow of Rule,” 62. 129 See Circular 293/1956, The Employment of Prisoners on Development Schemes, 16 March 1956, Treatment of Offenders Sub-Committee Circulars 1947–59, CO 912/2, tna. 130 Lichtenstein, Twice the Work of Free Labour, 194.
Ricardo D. Salvatore and Carlos Aguirre
Introduction
Post-independence Latin American nation-states gradually embarked into an ambitious – albeit frequently contradictory – process of transformation in their political, economic, institutional, and labour structures. The dominant projected path was going to be one that would move these societies towards free market economies, wage labour, republicanism, universal male citizen- ship, and the rule of law. The abolition of slavery and other forms of unfree labour was seen as a necessary step in that process, as was also the implemen- tation of various disciplinary mechanisms – public education, new civil and penal codes, and police and prison reforms, to name but a few – that would allow these societies to become modern and civilized and forge free and virtu- ous citizens. This set of goals was constantly marred, and even subverted, by the realities of social and ethnic fragmentation, the uneven implementation of some of the key projected reforms, recurrent political instability, patterns of domination and social control inherited from colonial times, economic constraints, authoritarian forms of rule, and foreign intervention. Two of the key arenas for social and institutional change over the course of the nineteenth century were punishment and labour. In most countries, although with different rhythms, the preferred model of punishment became incarceration and the chosen prison system tended to be the penitentiary regime.1 But the actual implementation of this penal design was severely affected by various factors that resulted in the survival of ancien-regime/ colonial forms of punishment (death penalty, whipping, banishment, public works, and others), the persistence of largely un-reformed jails and prisons, and the limited and inconsistent application of the penitentiary model.2 Vast
1 Ricardo D. Salvatore and Carlos Aguirre, eds., The Birth of the Penitentiary in Latin America. Essays on Criminology, Prison Reform, and Social Control, 1830–1940 (Austin, 1996). 2 Lila Caimari, Apenas un delincuente. Crimen, castigo y cultura en la Argentina, 1880–1955 (Buenos Aires, 2004); Carlos Aguirre, The Criminals of Lima and their Worlds. The Prison
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004285026_012
Experience, 1850–1930 (Durham, 2005); Ernesto Bohoslavskly, “Sobre los limites del control social. Estado, historia y politica en la periferia argentina (1890–1930),” in Maria S. Di Liscia and Ernesto Bohoslavsky, eds., Instituciones y formas de control social en América Latina, 1840–1940. Una revisión (Buenos Aires, 2005), 49–72. 3 Arnold Bauer, “Rural Workers in Spanish America: Problems of Peonage and Oppression,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 59, 1, 1979, 34–63; Ricardo D. Salvatore, “Repertoires of Coercion and Market Culture in Nineteenth-Century Buenos Aires Province,” International Review of Social History, 45, 3, 2000, 409–448; John M. Monteiro, “Labor Systems, 1492–1850,” in Victor Bulmer-Thomas, John Coatsworth and Roberto Cortés-Conde, eds., The Cambridge Economic History of Latin America (Cambridge, 2006), Vol. 2, 1–80; Carlos Aguirre, Dénle duro que no siente. Poder y transgresión en el Perú republicano (Lima, 2008).
The Juan Fernández Islands (Chile)
From the 17th century to the 19th century, these islands went through impor- tant changes. At first a place coveted by pirates and rival navies, the islands became a Spanish bastion for the defense of the South Pacific in the second half of the 18th century. Since then they began to receive common criminals in permanent exile. But it was the beginning of the republic in the early 19th century that consolidated the function of the archipelago as a place for exile of political and criminal prisoners. Towards the second half of the 19th century, particularly after 1860, Chilean authorities made some attempts to promote private colonization in the islands. All of them failed. Between 1624 and 1749 the islands were the prey of British, French and Dutch privateers and corsairs. The Spanish Crown responded to the geo-political challenge of rival commercial and naval empires by building fortifications and settling a small military garrison. Natural disasters (earthquakes), miserable
4 “Juan Fernández – wrote Chilean historian Vicuña Mackenna – was the Bastille that Western Spanish America had in common, from Panama to the Cape Horn” Benjamin Vicuña Mackenna, Juan Fernandez. Historia verdadera de la isla de Robinson Crusoe (Santiago de Chile, 1883), 201.
5 Vicuña Mackenna, Juan Fernandez, 303–305. 6 Vicuña Mackenna wrote: “That was a motley crowd comprised of Blacks from Peru, zambos from Quito, soldiers from Spain and, without counting other mixed groups, two Indians from Chile” (Vicuña Mackenna, Juan Fernandez, 327). 7 In a process that could be dated from 1810 to 1818. 8 Vicuña Mackenna, Juan Fernandez, 412–414.
9 Vicuña Mackenna, Juan Fernandez, 483–484. 10 Vicuña Mackenna, Juan Fernandez, 531–533. 11 Ralph L. Woodward, Robinson Crusoe’s Island (Chapel Hill, n.c., 1969), 153–154.
12 Woodward, Robinson Crusoe’s Island, 144–147. 13 By 1832 about 300 men and women constituted the population of this village of fishers and herders. 14 Woodward, Robinson Crusoe’s Island, 191–194.
15 Vicuña Mackenna, Juan Fernandez, 742–755. 16 Vicuña Mackenna, Juan Fernandez. 17 Vicuña Mackenna, Juan Fernandez, 801–806. 18 Ministerio de Justicia, “Memoria presentada por la Comisión nombrada para estudiar la implantación de la Colonia Penal en Juan Fernández,” in Memoria i anuario del Ministerio de Justicia 1908 (Santiago de Chile, 1908), 171–178.
19 González Eugenio, Más afuera (Santiago de Chile, 1930).
The Ushuaia Penal Colony (Argentina)
The Border Treaty of 1881 signed by Argentina and Chile separated Patagonia between the two countries, following the line of the Andean cordillera. This treaty resolved a serious political problem and established the basis for an effective occupation of the southern territories. Earlier projects by Nicasio Oroño and Francisco P. Moreno (in 1868 and 1876) had pointed out the need to establish a penal colony in Patagonia in order to confine there the growing delinquent population that immigration and urbanization were generating.20 The project of setting up a penal colony in Tierra del Fuego was the work of Minister of Justice Eduardo Madero (1882). His project contemplated a penal institution that would house and contain deported criminals and convicts sentenced to hard labour, with the expectation that ex-convicts would settle in the territory at the end of their sentences. When President Julio A. Roca presented the bill to Congress in 1883 the project was envisioned as one of “penal colonization.”21 The prison would contain dangerous and recidivist delinquents, but the final objective would be the settlement of population in order to affirm Argentine sovereignty over the eastern half of Tierra del Fuego. Since the southern penal colony had an overall geo-political interest, President Roca presented the project as a replication of the Australian experience. Congress delayed the treatment of the project, and a legal technicality obstructed its approval.22 Nonetheless, the plans for settlement of a penal colony in Tierra del Fuego continued. In 1883 new subprefectures were created in Santa Cruz and Ushuaia, reaffirming the central state’s will to establish sovereignty over the southern tip of the nation.23 In 1884, when the town of Ushuaia was founded, the newly appointed governor was temporarily put in charge of establishing a penal col- ony. Meanwhile the army had established a military presidio in the neighbor- ing Isla de los Estados (Island of the States), which functioned between 1884 and 1899. The enactment of the law 3,335 in 1895 lifted an existing constraint, estab- lishing the penalty of deportation or exile to the southern territories for two-time recidivist delinquents. Most of them came from the capital, Buenos Aires, and were men criminologists labeled as “professional thieves.”24 Since
20 Juan Carlos García Basalo, La colonización penal de Tierra del Fuego (Buenos Aires, 1988), 5–8; Silvana Cecarelli, El penal Fueguino (Ushuaia, 2010), 91–92. 21 García Basalo, La colonización penal, 13–15. 22 The reason was that the existing penal code did not contemplate the penalty of transportation. 23 García Basalo, La colonización penal, 36–40. 24 Cecarelli, El penal fueguino, 70–73 and 94–95; García Basalo, La colonización penal, 68–73.
1894–95 the island had started receiving “voluntary” prisoners to work in the first installations on the penal colony.25 In 1896 the island of Tierra del Fuego was finally designated as the site for the construction of a new prison, whose architectural design was placed under the supervision of the technical offices of the central government. In 1899 engineer Catello Muratgia, a believer in the principles of positivist criminology, assumed the directorship of the penal col- ony. Though at first he tried to move the projected prison to a more open space, the bay of Lapataia, the staunch opposition of Ushuaia residents made him change his decision and build the prison next to the town of Ushuaia.26 Muratgia’s project contemplated the combination of a modern prison with a colony of free settlers. Slightly modified, Roca’s project of “penal colonization” was still being pursued. The construction of the new Presidio started in 1902. It was envisioned as a modern prison to be built with local materials and entirely with the work of prisoners, at a very low cost to the state. The stones would come from a local mine (caldera), while the surrounding woods would provide all the lumber needed for the project. The architectural design – a radial building, with five pavilions containing individual cells and large rooms for workshops – followed the principles of modern penitentiaries.27 In 1902 the military prisoners of the neighboring island (Isla de los Estados) were moved to Ushuaia, creating a situation where two presidios stood close to each other. This movement prompted the first great mutiny and escape of prisoners, never to be repeated in this magnitude. In 1911 the two presidios were unified under a single com- mand with the name of “Presidio Militar and Cárcel de Reincidentes.”28 Over time, director Muratgia tried to give the Presidio the features of a modern peni- tentiary, separating prisoners by the graveness of their crimes, implementing work routines for the various workshops, and introducing a corps of profes- sional guards (“guarda-cárceles”). But due to the constant demand for labour required by the city and the need to keep the furnaces and heating system of the prison working, Muratgia implemented a labour system based on crews working in the open with limited supervision.29 Prisoners would go everyday (in a small train designed for the purpose) to a woodland 10 km away to chop down trees and bring the needed lumber and firewood. By 1907, various work-
25 Ushuaia was then a small village of 313 residents and 16 houses. 26 Cecarelli, El penal Fueguino, 102. 27 Carlos P. Vairo, El Presidio de Ushuaia: Una colección fotográfica (Ushuaia, 2007), vol. 1, 91–92. 28 Cecarelli, El penal Fueguino, 109. 29 Cecarelli, El penal Fueguino, 112.
30 Director Muratgia was a believer in the principles of positivist criminology. He created an anthropometric office and wrote reports on the physical and psychological condition of inmates. Cecarelli, El penal Fueguino, 111. 31 Lila Caimari, Apenas un delincuente, 67–68. 32 Vairo, El Presidio de Ushuaia, 101–103.
33 Vairo, El Presidio de Ushuaia, 114–117.
34 Vairo, El Presidio de Ushuaia, 99.
35 Caimari, Apenas un delincuente, 72. 36 Vairo, El Presidio de Ushuaia, 118–120.
Penal.37 The town had an unusual number of commercial establishments that survived chiefly due to the orders placed by the Penal. The town benefited largely from the work of the convicts. The electricity and heating that town residents enjoyed was generated with lumber extracted, transported, and pieced by convicts. The same could be said of several of the town’s facilities, such as current water, sewage, consolidated streets, and a harbor. Nothing of this could have been possible without the extenuating work of convicts. The main settlers of the town of Ushuaia were employees of the prison, merchants, and other service-providers to the Penal. To them, the work of prisoners provided a substantial transfer of resources that facilitated their lives and reduced their cost of housing, heating, and other utilities. In fact, one could argue that the town of Ushuaia grew in time to become a city – contrary to the case of the village communities at Juan Fernández and Fernando de Noronha –, thanks to the systematic and disciplined work of convicts. Town residents considered the Penal’s workforce crucial to their survival. When director Muratgia contemplated the idea of re-locating the prison to the more ample bay of Lapataia, leading residents of Ushuaia resisted the idea. They ultimately prevailed and the new Presidio was built on the same grounds of the former, adjacent to the town. At some point the town was surrounded by two prisons, the Presidio Militar and the Cárcel de Reincidentes. This apparently did not generate much anxiety about insecurity among resi- dents. Since the beginning, there was a permanent daily interaction between town-dwellers and convicts. Though there were at times some concern and apprehension about the possibility of escapes, the relations between prisoners and residents seem to have been in general quite cordial. Town dwellers went to the prison to buy bread on a daily basis, and occasionally to get firewood or lumber for construction. Under the control of the Penal’s director, convict labour was chiefly channeled to the necessities of both the Presidio and the town, not to the requirements of the region’s development. Jurisdictional disputes between the director of the prison and the governor of the territory prevented or delayed the resolution of important issues for the development of the region: the construction of a bigger port, the arrangement of regular shipping services connecting Tierra del Fuego with the continent, and more importantly, the opening of roads across the island to better exploit its natural resources. For a long time, it remained unclear what authority was entitled to grant licenses to exploit the woods, operate shipping lines, or use land for raising sheep. Even the sawmill, one of the main activities of the town, was a disputed asset
37 Cecarelli, El penal Fueguino, 118.
38 The funds spent on the Penal de Ushuaia came from the budgets allocated to the minis- tries of Justice and Instruction and Defense. 39 In time, this southern colony would also become, as the rest of Argentine “national terri- tories,” a province, acquiring in the process important political and fiscal benefits. Tierra
The Fernando de Noronha Island (Brazil)
During most of the 19th century, the Fernando de Noronha Island functioned as a central prison for all Brazilian states. Convicts sentenced to galés (prison- ships or, more generally, harsh labour) and degredo (transportation) were sent from almost all Brazilian states lacking modern or even secure prison facili- ties.40 Between 1830 and 1890 there was a gradual transition from military con- trol of the prison – the islands were used to confine people sentenced by military tribunals – to civilian jurisdiction.41 In 1833, the island started to receive civilians sentenced by penal courts in the mainland. In 1865 the island- prison was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice and, conse- quently, its military garrison came under the supervision of civilian authorities. Yet, for most of the period, military and civilian prisoners shared facilities and daily life in the islands. Though clearly the island served as a place of tempo- rary banishment for criminals and political prisoners – and to this extent, was little different from Juan Fernández in Chile – Fernando de Noronha was also used to experiment with penitentiary reforms. To this extent, it was also a labo- ratory of ideas about modern penal treatment, among them notions of penal colonization and the moral rehabilitation of prisoners. The failure of these reforms to transform daily life, discipline, and security in the island led to its final abandonment, first as the central prison of the country, and later as an experimental penal colony. Historian Pedrosa Costa has documented two main attempts at reforming the island-prison, one led by H. de B. Rohan in 1863–65 and the other promoted by A. Bandeira Filho in the new bylaws passed in 1885.42 Rohan’s project required women to be brought to the island, so that prisoners could constitute families. He wanted prisoners to work in agriculture, cultivating manioc and mijo, in addition to cotton already planted. Prisoners should also raise live- stock (cattle, horses, hogs, and sheep) and chicken. In the future, he envisioned, agriculture should constitute a self-sustaining, lucrative activity that could be
del Fuego was declared a Maritime Governorship in 1943, in 1957 became a National Territory, and finally it was declared a Province in 1986. 40 On the penalty of “degredo” see Fabricia Noronha, “O império dos indesejáveis: uma análise do degredo e da punição no Brasil império,” Em tempo de histórias, 8, 2004, 1–16. 41 Peter M. Beattie, “Conscription versus Penal Servitude: Army Reform’s Influence on the Brazilian State’s Management of Social Control, 1870–1930,” Journal of Social History, 32, 4, 1999, 847–878. 42 Marcos P. Pedrosa Costa, “O caos ressurgirá da ordem: Fernando de Noronha e a reforma prisional no Imperio” (Master thesis, Departamento de Historia. Paraiba, Universidade Federal da Paraiba, 2007).
43 Pedrosa Costa, “O caos ressurgirá da ordem,” 57–65. 44 Pedrosa Costa, “O caos ressurgirá da ordem,” 80–85.
45 Pedrosa Costa, “O caos ressurgirá da ordem,” 86. 46 Later on, the prison was re-opened, and in 1914 the state of Pernambuco declared that the island was to become an “agrarian penitentiary.”
47 Pedrosa Costa, “O caos ressurgirá da ordem,” 89–90. 48 Pedrosa Costa, “O caos ressurgirá da ordem,” 96–98.
49 Pedrosa Costa, “O caos ressurgirá da ordem,” 105–116. 50 Pedrosa Costa, “O caos resurgirá da ordem.”
The Islas Marías Penal Colony (Mexico)52
Mexico had a very peculiar path towards prison reform after its independence from Spain. Like other countries in Spanish America, penal experts began to adopt the language of penitentiary reform modeled after the North American experiences in Philadelphia, Auburn, and others prisons. The first proposal to build a panopticon-type penitentiary in Mexico City was issued in 1850, although the first one actually built was the penitentiary of Escobedo, in Guadalajara, in 1875. This was followed by others in cities such as San Luis Potosí, Puebla, and Mexico City. At the same time that the penitentiary system was embraced, Mexican experts began to formulate proposals to create penal colonies in remote areas to host transported criminals. The first project to develop a penal colony in the Islas Marías archipelago dates from 1857, but it did not materialize.53 Subsequent initiatives to create agricultural penal colonies in Yucatan and Baja California in the 1860s, where inmates and their families would receive a plot of land to work on them “with all the rights of free men” for at least six months, did not succeed either.54 Partly because of the lack of resources and partly because of the opposition by penal experts who favored incarceration in penitentiaries over transporta- tion to penal colonies all these proposals remained unfulfilled. In fact, the 1871 Penal Code abolished presidios and forced labour altogether, thus eliminating
51 On the evolution of the penal systems in Brazilian states, see Martha K. Huggins, From Slavery to Vagrancy in Brazil: Crime and Social Control in the Third World (New Brunswick, 1984); Peter M. Beattie, “Conscription versus Penal Servitude: Army Reforms’ Influence on Brazilian States’ Management of Social Control, 1870–1930,” Journal of Social History, 32, 4, 1999, 848–878; idem, The Tribute of Blood. Army, Honor, Race, and Nation in Brazil, 1864–1945 (Durham, 2001); Clarissa Nunes Maia et al., eds., História das Prisões no Brasil, 2 vols (Rio de Janeiro, 2009). 52 This section has drawn heavily from Diego Pulido’s unpublished ma Thesis, “La tumba del Pacífico. Historia de la colonia penal de las Islas Marias, 1905–1939,” (Masters thesis, Instituto Mora, Mexico City, 2007). We would like to thank the author for graciously shar- ing his work with us. 53 Evangelina Avilés Quevedo, Arquitectura y urbanismo de Islas Marias. Una práctica del diseño en la readaptación social (Culiacán, 2009), 78. 54 Pulido, “La tumba del Pacífico,” 41.
55 Pulido, “La tumba del Pacífico,” 42. 56 Pablo Piccato, City of Suspects: Crime in Mexico City, 1900–1931 (Durham, 2001). 57 Avilés, Arquitectura y urbanismo de Islas Marias, 79. 58 Julio Rodriguez Patiño, El penal de las Islas Marias (Mexico City, 1965), 33, 37. 59 Javier Piña y Palacios, La colonia penal de Islas Marias (Mexico City, 1970), 36.
60 Robert Buffington, Criminal and Citizen in Modern Mexico (Lincoln, 2000), 99. 61 Pulido, “La tumba del Pacífico,” 48. 62 Piña y Palacios, La colonia penal de Islas Marias, 38. 63 Julio C. Palma, La verdad sobre las Islas Marías (Mexico City, 1938), 21–22.
64 Pulido, “La tumba del Pacífico,” 56. 65 Buffington, Criminal and Citizen, 104. 66 Pulido,”“La tumba del Pacífico,” 57. 67 Pulido, “La tumba del Pacífico,” 60. 68 Pulido, “La tumba del Pacífico,” 65, 67. 69 Pulido, “La tumba del Pacífico,” 68.
According to one penal expert, incorrigible criminals had to be sent to “the tor- rid temperatures of Islas Marías, far away from any human collective that considers itself honest.”70 Who were the inmates transported to Islas Marías? From the beginning, the main targets of this new punitive scheme were vagrants, beggars, and rateros. Transportation sought to eliminate from Mexican cities and prisons the mass of “petty delinquents” who constituted “the customary and daily population of jails.”71 Most of them were described as “pernicious” or “incorrigible.” The con- nection between rateros and penal colonies was one of the defining features of this institution. In 1910 alone, more than 2,000 suspects accused of theft were sent to Islas Marías.72 The profile of those relegated to Islas Marías was quite revealing: the majority of them were young working-class male suspects (shoemakers, porters, jornaleros) accused of drinking, petty theft, or vagran- cy.73 Police raids in the main cities (known as razzias) resulted in the detention of dozens of suspects who were then quickly transported in groups (called “cuerdas”) to Islas Marías. These cuerdas were comprised by groups of between 70 and 400 individuals who covered the distance between their cities and the Island by railroad, foot, and sea.74 The disproportionate length of sentences imposed on some of the trans- ported criminals is worth highlighting: one individual was sentenced to seven years in Islas Marías for carrying two sarapes (shawls) whose origin he could not explain; another one was sentenced to three years for stealing a blanket.75 In July 1911, an “honest man” was walking in the San Lucas Plaza, in Mexico City, when he was pushed by an individual who seemed suspicious because of his “weird clothes” (rara indumentaria). The man noticed that his watch had been stolen. With the help of a policeman the alleged thief was captured, taken to jail, and then sent to Islas Marías.76 Not only men but also women and minors were sentenced to transportation to the Islands: a ten year old child, Leonardo Rodríguez, was sent to the island in August of 1910 to serve a two-year sentence. In fact, one cuerda of prisoners sent to Islas Marías in 1909 was comprised by “119 rateros, 19 rateras, and 19 raterillos.”77
70 Quoted in Pulido, “La tumba del Pacífico,” 68. 71 Pulido, “La tumba del Pacífico,” 49. 72 Pulido, “La tumba del Pacífico,” 84. 73 Pulido, “La tumba del Pacífico,” 85. 74 Pulido, “La tumba del Pacífico,” 90. 75 Pulido, “La tumba del Pacífico,” 86. 76 Pulido, “La tumba del Pacífico,” 87. 77 Pulido, “La tumba del Pacífico,” 97.
The detention of suspects in the streets of Mexican cities and their ensuing transportation to Islas Marías took place without any consideration for their legal or civic rights. The arbitrariness of transportation to the penal colony was one of its defining features: most people sent to Islas Marías had not been pro- cessed following standard criminal justice procedures. “Preventive” transpor- tation allowed authorities to randomly pick “undesirable” people and send them to the penal colony. Police abuse against lower-class and poor people was the norm. Those detained were held incommunicado and their families were not notified of their transportation to the Islands. Relegación (banishment), wrote one commentator, “is nothing but a constant violation of the rights of these individuals.” In 1931, out of 833 relegados only 39 had been legally sen- tenced, while in 1935 the figures were 629 and 32 respectively.78 The total number of colonos – as the transported criminals were known – fluctuated widely between 1908 and 1947, when relegation was legally abol- ished. But there is evidence that the maximum was kept at 2,000. In 1909 there were 1,438 inmates.79 By July 1919, according to one report, there were about 2,000 colonos in María Madre.80 In 1935, the inmate population oscillated between 762 and 1119 men, and 19 to 28 women.81 In 1936, there was a census of the entire population of the María Madre Island: among the free population, there were 120 men, 124 women, 64 boys, and 75 girls, for a total of 383. Among the colono population, there were 240 and 12 sentenced men and women, respectively, along with 339 men and 5 women sent there by the government, without a judicial sentence. The total number of colonos was 596, and the total population of the island was 979.82 The proportion of inmates to free residents in the island was roughly 2 to 1. Work was a central element in the operation of the penal colony, but it was not always used consistently. In the early years, inmates, especially those newly arrived, were forced to work in construction or in the salt quarries, “the most intense and exhausting” of all the jobs in the penal colony.83 Extracting salt, besides being a very demanding job, caused serious health problems and even death.84 “Intense physical labour” was generally imposed on inmates, be it in the quarries, carrying stones and other construction materials, extracting lime,
78 Alfredo, Pérez Espinoza, El penal de las Islas Marías (Mexico City, 1937), 51. 79 Palma, La verdad sobre la Islas Marías, 67. 80 Pulido, “La tumba del Pacífico,” 156. 81 Pérez Espinoza, El penal de las Islas Marías, 29. 82 Juan de Dios Bojórnez, Islas Marías en el Océano Pacífico (Mexico City), 1937, 69–70. 83 Palma, La verdad sobre la Islas Marías, 34. 84 Avilés Quevedo, Arquitectura y urbanismo de Islas Marías, 81–85; Pérez Espinoza, El penal de las Islas Marías, 26–27.
85 Palma, La verdad sobre la Islas Marías, 34. 86 Pulido, “La tumba del Pacífico,” 159. 87 Pérez Espinoza, El penal de las Islas Marías, 63–69. 88 Pulido, “La tumba del Pacífico,” 158; Judith Martínez Ortega, La isla (Mexico City, 1938), 125. 89 Pulido, “La tumba del Pacífico,” 158. 90 Pulido, “La tumba del Pacífico,” 105. 91 Pulido, “La tumba del Pacífico,” 110. 92 Pulido, “La tumba del Pacífico,” 112. 93 Pulido, “La tumba del Pacifico,” 115–116; Javier Mac Gregor Campuzano, “Comunistas en las Islas Marias, julio-diciembre de 1932.” Signos históricos 8 (julio-diciembre, 2002), 139–150.
94 José Revueltas, Los muros de agua [1941] (Mexico City, 1978). 95 Heriberto Navarrete, En las Islas Marías (Mexico City, 1965), 55. 96 Navarrete, En las Islas Marías, 60. 97 Pulido, “La tumba del Pacífico,” 180–186. 98 Pulido, “La tumba del Pacífico,” 154. 99 Martínez Ortega, La isla, 125.
Over time, the island of María Madre began to resemble just another Mexican town. The penal colony comprised, during the 1930s, up to 3,000 people, including inmates, administrators, settlers, and their families. Inmates lived in barracks, but there was a great deal of mobility between the different spaces and buildings that comprised the penal colony. The atmosphere was that of a small town, with taverns, spaces of socialization, schools, grocery stores, and so forth. There are numerous testimonies that indicate that, despite the arbitrary origin of their detention and the usually harsh conditions of work, inmates or colonos enjoyed a certain degree of “freedom,” that the penal colony did not feel like a terribly oppressive place for all. Judith Martínez Ortega, who came to work as secretary for the colony’s director in the late 1920s, wrote that “the prison was not to be seen anywhere. The impression of filth, oppression, and misery of the Mexico City penitentiary, was not to be found even in the most miserable corners of the island. Inmates walked freely; one would cross paths with them in the streets, as one would otherwise with the baker or any other ordinary people in any town.”100 Martinez Ortega stressed how hard it was to distinguish an employee from an inmate. The place resembled a rural farm (finca), wrote another one visitor. It looked like a “vil- lage of smiling faces,” added another.101 Several reports emphasized the inmates’ “freedom.” Vicente Matus, director of the Department of Migration for the Mexican government, visited the island in 1934 and left his impressions:
The entire town welcomed us; a town of inmates, but one not resembling such: they are free men, good and hard-working men, well dressed, well fed, who came to chat with us. There is no penitentiary there, neither large nor small. It does not resemble a penal colony. It is a town of free people, who can go wherever they want.102
Housing in the island resembled the tenement houses (casas de vecindad) of Mexico City. One inmate admitted that he worked in the island “with entire freedom, under a beautiful sky and breathing pure oxygen.”103 The Cristero priest mentioned above, despite all his complaints about his confinement, also admitted: “The truth is, the scenario of our disgrace was splendid.”104
100 Martínez Ortega, La isla, 13. 101 Pulido, “La tumba del Pacífico,” 149. 102 Piña y Palacios, La colonia penal de Islas Marías, 92. 103 Pulido, “La tumba del Pacífico,” 158. 104 Navarrete, En las Islas Marías, 68.
And yet, despite these depictions of Islas Marías as a free and welcoming place, reality seems to have been much less benign. Many other witnesses emphasized the harshness, even the cruelty, with which transported criminals were treated. Judith Martínez, mentioned above, referred to the cruelty of the spectacle of cuerdas of prisoners arriving to the island: they resembled a “herd of miserable and raggedy group of men, fearful because of the horrific reputation of the prison.”105 Another visitor found half-naked inmates infected with malaria and having to cope with scores of voracious mosquitoes. In his novel Los muros de agua, José Revueltas explicitly tried to portray “the infa- mous, appalling life among assassins, rateros, and all kinds of degenerated people” that political prisoners were forced to share.106 Cruelty and arbitrariness were the norm. Punishment against those who violated the norms was harsh. Offenders were sometimes sent to Arroyo Hondo, the most inhospitable area of the Island. On one occasion, authorities could not identify the author of a theft, so they sent two hundred inmates to Arroyo Hondo, where they were all whipped. Numerous complaints reached the federal government in Mexico City. One of them, in 1935, summarized the situation with this statement: “the Penal Colony of the Pacific [Ocean] is a hell.” Two homosexual inmates were severely whipped on their naked backs in front of the entire inmate population as a way of punishing them and sending a warning to others.107 Quite clearly, the penal colony was ruled with a very strong hand, even if at times it gave the impression of being a place of solace and benevolence. Islas Marías functioned basically as an enclave: its isolation, the difficult means of communication, and the power enjoyed by its director and authori- ties, made the population highly vulnerable to abuse. Communist writer José Revueltas described the privileges the colony’s director enjoyed (a huge mansion, a swimming pool, and a tennis court, among other luxuries), a sharp contrast with the living conditions of the inmate population.108 The rule of law did not exist in the colony. A newspaper suggested in 1934 that transported inmates had been sent there to be tortured and make them suffer, not to be regenerated.109 In 1947, banishment was eliminated as a judicial penalty in the Mexican penal code, but the Islas Marías continues to exist as a federal prison until today.
105 Martínez Ortega, La isla, 27. 106 José Revueltas, Los días terrenales (Madrid, 1996), 417. 107 Pulido, “La tumba del Pacífico,” 149, 173. 108 Revueltas, Los muros de agua, 88. 109 Pulido, “La tumba del Pacífico,” 176.
Islas Marías represents a case of relative success in the operation of a penal colony. It functioned for several decades as destination for different types of “undesirable” people that Mexican authorities wanted to evict from their cities. Those being transported to the Island were victims of highly arbitrary measures implemented in an effort to “clean up” streets from “incorrigible” elements, free up space in prisons and jails, and offer a certain degree of secu- rity to the residents of Mexican cities. Living conditions at Islas Marías were not as dreadful as they were, for instance, in the Belem Jail or the Lecumberri penitentiary, but they were certainly not pleasant. Although Islas Marías was conceived as a place for rehabilitation, it would be hard to say that the reform of colonos was the main goal behind its erection. Besides removing them from the streets, the key function of transportation of colonos to Islas Marías was to exploit them as labourers, something that was fully accomplished through their work in construction, salt quarries, timber, and other activities. Finally, although apparently not central to the creation of the penal colony, the growth and development of a permanent settlement around the prison was accom- plished to a degree not seen in other Latin American experiments, with the exception of Ushuaia in Argentina.
Conclusion
The history of the penal colonies explored in this chapter sheds light on the complex relationship between punishment, labour, and modernization in Latin America. The post-Independence period was generally marked by a series of ambiguous and half-hearted attempts at building modern and liberal republics, modernising the labour market, promoting legal and effective incor- poration of subaltern groups into the political process, forging law-abiding citizens, and breaking colonial forms of exclusion based on ethnic adscription. The trajectories of both labour and punitive systems highlight the contradic- tions between the rhetoric of civilization, progress, and modernity, and the stubborn realities of exclusion and marginalization. Penal colonies were built in Latin America at different times and used for different purposes. The penal colony at Juan Fernández Island on the Pacific developed during the Spanish colonial administration as a defense outpost that could be manned with criminals exiled from all the Pacific-coast depen- dencies. It passed on to the jurisdiction of Chile after independence, whose government used it to banish common criminals and political dissidents during most of the 19th century. To this extent, this was the oldest of penal colonies examined here. Although the Portuguese had used it as a site of exile,
Fernando de Noronha became an army-administered penal colony in the 1830s, and gradually moved to civilian control towards the 1860s. At first used to release the overcrowding of local jails and provincial prisons, the colony acted for most of the post-independence period as a central prison for the Brazilian empire. The penal colonies at Ushuaia (Argentina) and Islas Marías (Mexico) belong to periods of rapid economic modernization and were the result of the policies of governments of the “era of progress”: General Julio A. Roca in Argentina and General Porfirio Díaz in Mexico. Both were planned in the 1880s and established in the first years of the 20th century (1900 and 1905 respec- tively). Hence, it is to be expected that these penal colonies embodied different state visions of discipline and of punishment. To what extent were these experiments with punitive labour “penal colo- nies”? It is clear that the Chilean government attempted once and again to establish a penal colony at Juan Fernández islands, yet the recurrent mutinies and mass escapes prevented the existence of a permanent government in the islands. In fact, many times over the 19th century the islands were abandoned. When functioning, its varying regimes were never able to attract more than a few hundred inhabitants. With so little potential convict labour – and even less settlers – the islands were never a viable economic alternative. That is why, in the 1880s, Vicuña Mackenna advised to end with all penal and colonization experiments and start to think of the islands as a tourist destination. Even as places for the banishment of common criminals and political opponents the penal experiment was a failure: it could not keep these subjects from escaping and returning to the mainland. Though the Chilean state as well as some indi- vidual reformers projected on Juan Fernández some ideas of national sover- eignty and crime control, it is clear on the light of the meager results that this “penal colony” never found an appropriate administrative form to keep some minimal measure of order and discipline. Fernando de Noronha, on the Atlantic coast of Brazil, was to this extent closer to the idea of a penal colony. The federal government was able to control the island’s population and establish certain order among inmates. Though there were some revolts and attempts to escape, the government did not aban- don this colony until the 1890s. The internal regime within the colony was rather lax, inmates mixing with guards and soldiers to the extent of living in a sort of “confined village.” The two reforms examined, one in the 1860s, the other in the 1880s, underscore the limits of using convict labour for productive activities, agriculture, or manufacturing. We can say, however, that the reform- ers (Rohan and Bandeira Filho) projected over this island ideals of order and reformation – the first imagined an agrarian penal colony, the second a penal colony integrated to a national system of crime control – that were in tune
PART 3 Convict Labour and Governmentality
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chapter 11 Gender and Convict Labour: The Italian Case in Global Context
Mary Gibson
Analysis of the relationship between gender and convict labour is central to larger questions about how women and men experienced the birth of the prison from the eighteenth through the early twentieth century. Yet, accounts of the transition from corporal punishment to incarceration have rarely incor- porated gender as a “useful category of analysis,” in the famous formulation of Joan Scott.1 Historians have focused almost exclusively on the male experi- ence, even if the titles of their studies seem to promise a more universal per- spective. This was true of the pioneers of the “revisionist school” of prison history in the 1970s – Michel Foucault, Michael Ignatieff, and David Rothman – who identified the period between 1760 and 1840 as the key turning point in penological practices with the construction of large networks of penitentiaries in France, England, and the United States.2 It has also been true of the more recent wave of books on the establishment of prisons in the non-Western world during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which were either imposed by colonial administrators or adopted by new nation-states as symbols of modernization.3 While a few of these authors, such as Carlo Aguirre in his history of Lima’s early prisons, explain their decision to exclude women, most do not even acknowledge the skewed nature of their accounts. Thus gen- der is almost entirely absent from our understanding of the two fundamental stages in the establishment of incarceration as the primary mode of punish- ment: the first wave in Europe and the United States at the turn of the
1 See Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” American Historical Review, 91:5 (1986). 2 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York, 1977); Michael Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750–1850 (New York, 1978); David J. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston, 1971). 3 Peter Zinoman, The Colonial Bastille: A History of Imprisonment in Vietnam, 1862–1940 (Berkeley, 2001); Daniel V. Botsman, Punishment and Power in the Making of Modern Japan (Princeton, 2005); Frank Dikötter, Crime, Punishment and the Prison in Modern China (New York, 2002); Carlos Aguirre, The Criminals of Lima and Their Worlds: The Prison Experience, 1850–1935 (Durham nc, 2005).
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004285026_013
4 Nicole Hahn Rafter, Partial Justice: Women in State Prison, 1800–1935 (Boston, 1985); Estelle B. Freedman, Their Sisters’ Keepers: Women’s Prison Reform in America, 1830–1930 (Ann Arbor, 1984); Lucia Zedner, Women, Crime, and Custody in Victorian England (Oxford, 1991). 5 Norval Morris and David J. Rothman, eds., The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society (New York, 1998). 6 Patricia O’Brien, The Promise of Punishment: Prisons in Nineteenth-Century France (Princeton, nj, 1982); Pieter Spierenburg, The Prison Experience: Disciplinary Institutions and Their Inmates in Early Modern Europe (New Brunswick, nj, 1991).
7 The most notorious example of the latter was the treadwheel, employed in some English prisons to force inmates to perform excruciating physical exertion to power a wheel that produced nothing.
8 During the first fifty years after unification, the number of women’s prison fluctuated between 4–7. 9 Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments (Indianapolis, 1986). 10 On the period before unification, see Monica Calzolari, “La Casa di detenzione alle Terme diocleziane di Roma (1831–1891),” in Livio Antonielli, ed., Carceri, carcerieri, carcerati. Dall’antico regime all’Ottocento (Soveria Mannelli, 2006); M. Da Passano, ed. Le colonie penali nell’Europa dell’Ottocento (Rome, 2004); Livio Antonielli, ed., Carceri, carcerieri, carcerati. Dall’antico regime all’Ottocento (Soveria Mannelli, 2006); Simona Trombetta, Punizione e carità. Carceri femminili nell’Italia dell’Ottocento (Bologna, 2004). For the fifty years after unification, see Susan B. Carrafiello, ‘The Tombs of the Living’: Prisons and Prison Reform in Liberal Italy (New York, 1998). For the twentieth century, see Giovanni Tessitore, Carcere e fascistizzazione. Analisi di un modello totalizzante (Milan, 2005); Christian G. De Vito, Camosci e girachiavi: Storia del carcere in Italia (Bari/Roma, 2009).
Women
In Rome, modern prison labour – work for the purpose of rehabilitation – became an integral part of punishment much earlier for women than for men. The introduction of productive labour in relatively healthy conditions was occasioned by the establishment of the women’s prison at San Michele in 1735 by Pope Clement XII. A radical experiment for its time, San Michele was designed by the eminent architect Ferdinando Fuga to house female inmates in separate cells aligned in three tiers along one wall.11 Each cell had a latrine as well as two windows, one facing the interior hall and the second on the exte- rior wall, to let in light and fresh air. From one end of the long central hall, a sin- gle guard could monitor all inmates while a chapel at the other end was visible from all cells. The women’s prison at San Michele, therefore, corresponded to the ideal architecture later proposed by enlightenment reformers at the turn of the nineteenth century: the strict separation of inmates; ventilation and light for a healthy atmosphere; and control by the “gaze” of the guard. Furthermore, unlike early modern prisons that held only suspects awaiting trial or debtors, San Michele interned women who had already been sentenced for sexual, property, or violent crimes. It thus presaged the later widespread practice of using incarceration as punishment. The modernity of San Michele extended to its inclusion of labour as a method of reform. A large architecture complex located on the banks of the Tiber River, San Michele was first established as an orphanage for homeless or abandoned children and expanded over the years to include shelters for the aged poor, a refuge for unmarried women, and a boys’ reformatory. In the cen- tre of the complex was the wool factory that employed all its able-bodied inhabitants in the production primarily of uniforms for the Papal armies. Work took up the largest part of the day for the female prisoners of San Michele, who spun the wool together on long benches in the large hall. The tediousness of the spinning was compounded by the rule of silence. That prison labour was
11 Elena Andreozzi, “L’intervento di Ferdinando Fuga all’Ospizio Apostolico del S. Michele: Il carcere delle donne,” Ricerche di Storia dell’Arte, 22 (1984).
12 Chiara Lucrezio Monticelli, “La nascita del carcere femminile a Roma tra XVIII e XIX secolo,” Studi Storici, 48:2 (2007), 467. Lucrezio Monticelli is the first to have located the “birth of the women’s prison” in the establishment of San Michele. 13 Angela Groppi, “Roman Alms and Poor Relief in the Seventeenth Century,” in Peter van Kessel and Elisja Schutte, eds., Rome-Amsterdam: Two Growing Cities in Seventeenth- Century Europe (Amsterdam, 1997). 14 For example, see Sherrill Cohen, The Evolution of Women’s Asylums since 1500 (New York, 1992).
15 Carlo-Luigi Morichini, Degli istituti di carità per la sussistenza e l’educazione dei poveri e dei prigionieri in Roma, 3 vols. (Rome, 1870), vol. 3, 695. 16 Morichini, 706. 17 Lucrezio Monticelli, “La nascita del carcere femminile a Roma tra XVIII e XIX secolo,” 468.
18 On the lax inspection of female prisons, see Mary Gibson, “Women’s Prisons in Italy: A Problem of Citizenship,” Crime, Histoire & Sociétés, 13:2 (2009). 19 Regio Decreto 17 gennaio 1862, Article 192. 20 For an excellent account of Barolo’s role in prison reform, see Trombetta, Punizione e carità. Carceri femminili nell’Italia dell’Ottocento. 21 The number of religiously-managed institutions for adult women rose from over 8 in 1877 to over 14 in 1890; the number of girls’ reformatories in 1881 was 15. For the statistics on women, see Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Minstero dell’Interno, Direzione Generale delle Carceri), Archivio generale, Atti amministrativi (1896–1905), b. 78, f. 1-A and 64. For girls reformatories, see Rivista di Discipline Carcerarie (rdc), v. 11 (1881) 98, 101–102. 22 istat, Statistica delle Carceri, 1871–1914 (with gaps); also Annuario Statistico. 23 Trombetta, Punizione e carità. Carceri femminili nell’Italia dell’Ottocento, 246.
24 Statistica decennale delle carceri (Civitavecchia, 1880), 95 and Stat. carc., 1881–82. 25 Annuario statistico, 1881 and 1884. 26 Rossana, “Case penali per donne,” Nuova Antologia, 62 (246) (1912), 663–664. 27 Ibid., 664. 28 Ibid., 662.
29 Ibid., 669. 30 Ibid., 664. 31 Maria Rygier, “Il monachismo nelle carceri femminili: La casa penale di Torino,” Il Grido del Popolo, April 10, 1909. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid.
Men
The introduction of the modern penitentiary in the Papal States, and thus of labour as a component of rehabilitation, occurred much later for men than for women. It was not until 1832 that a new Criminal Code incorporated “deten- tion or reclusion” in its scale of punishments, thereby offering an alternative to the traditional categories of corporal punishment or hard labour for men convicted of minor crimes.34 To accommodate male prisoners serving short sentences, a section of Diocletian’s Baths was remodelled in 1834. Conditions for men sentenced to reclusion were similar to those for women who had been transferred to the same institution several years earlier. Like their female counterparts, they lived and worked indoors in a relatively healthy environ- ment provided by the location of Diocletians’ Baths on the Viminale Hill rather than the malarial centre of the city. Characterized by dormitories of 30–40 beds rather than individual cells, Diocletian’s Baths failed to achieve either the Philadelphia or Auburn model that was touted by contemporary prison reform- ers. Nonetheless male prisoners were employed in modern industries includ- ing textile production and, after 1840, printing. The importance of work was emphasized in the new “Disciplinary Regulation for the Houses of Punishment” of 1830, whose proclaimed purpose was “reforming and improving the morals of those who are confined, encouraging them more through emulation than fear of chastisement to lead a quiet and industrious life.”35
34 Sui delitti e sulle pene, 20 settembre 1832. 35 Regolamento disciplinale per le case di condanna (Rome, 1830). Located in the Archivio del Vicariato, Atti della Segretaria del Vicariato, Pachetto 26, Plico 1881 (f) E3.
The men sentenced to reclusion, however, constituted only a minority of male prisoners in the province of Rome. The majority were serving sentences of hard labour (lavoro forzato), either at the port of Civitavecchia, which was explicitly exempt from the moderate reforms in the Regulation of 1830, or at a separate section of Diocletian’s Baths. Hard labour had replaced the galleys as wind and eventually steam replaced oars as the main source of naval power in the Papal States by the nineteenth century. Despite its pretentions to reform, the Criminal Code of 1832 re-affirmed the centrality of two forms of hard labour: “galera,” a designation recalling the old punishment of galley rowing, for those sentenced from ten years to life; and “public works” for those with shorter sentences.36 Interchangeably dubbed “galeotti” (galley slaves) or “forzati” (hard labourers), prisoners in these two categories continued to wear distinctive striped uniforms, had their head and beards shaved, and were chained by the leg to a companion, even while working. Men sentenced to Civitavecchia lived and worked in government shipyards while those at Diocletian’s Baths were employed a variety of public works like maintaining roads and fortifications. Prisoners were also employed in the early excavations of the archeological ruins, including the Roman forum and Ostia Antica, that were becoming a passion of scholars at the turn of the nineteenth century.37 They built the large Verano cemetery on the outskirts of Rome, consecrated in 1834 by Pope Gregory XVI in order to discourage the burials in churches, a tra- ditional practice that was increasingly understood to be unhygienic and a threat to the urban population. When St. Paul outside the Walls, one of the four papal basilicas and a prime destination for pilgrims, burnt to the ground in 1823, it was rebuilt by prison labour. No longer isolated on ships, galeotti became a common sight on Roman streets, with their striped garments and their chains. Almost immediately after Rome became the new Italian capital, its city council began to call for the closing of Diocletian’s Baths because of its backwardness as an institution of punishment. Housed within an early mod- ern granary, itself constructed within the ruins of a Roman bath, it could never be remodeled to “achieve the twin goals of punishment, according to the teachings of the social sciences and ethics, which are to provide an example to
36 Capelli emphasizes the centrality of forced labour to the penal policy of the Papal States in the decades before unification. See Anna Capelli, La Buona Compagnia. Utopia e realità carceraria nell’Italia del Risorgimento (Milan, 1988), 84–85, 335. 37 For the employment of forzati at Ostia Antica, the ancient Roman port that fell to ruins after the founding of modern Ostia, see Arturo Pittaluga, “Galeotti agli scavi di Ostia Antica,” Lazio ieri e oggi, 11:1 (1975).
38 Atti del Consiglio Comunale di Roma (Roma, 1872–73) vol 3, 628. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid., 629. 42 Beltrani Scalia, “Il Bonificamento dell’Agro Romano con la mano d’opera dei condannti,” v. 26, 1901, 401. 43 For the best history of Tre Fontane, see Monica Calzolari and Mario Da Passano, “Il lavoro dei condannati all’aperto: L’esperimento della colonia delle Tre Fontane (1880–95),” in Da Passano, Le colonie penali nell’Europa dell’Ottocento.
44 “La Colonia dell Tre Fontane,” rdc, vol. xii (1882), p. 75. 45 Ibid., 79. 46 Ibid., 81. 47 Ibid., 45.
48 Calzolari and Da Passano, “Il lavoro dei condannati all’aperto: L’esperimento della colonia delle Tre Fontane (1880–95),” 160. 49 P. Nocito, “Una escursione alla colonia penale delle Tre Fontane,” Nuova Antologia (1882), 271. According to the Statistica delle Carceri for 1882, Tre Fontane held 327 inmates on December 31. 50 Ibid., 286. 51 The exact specifications for these huts (capannoni), as well as for other buildings planned for the hard labour camp at Tre Fontane can be found in rdc, vol. 11, 1881, 360–367. 52 Statistica delle carceri, 1881–82.
53 “Monografia del carcere giudiziario di Regina Coeli in Roma,” rdc, vo. 19 (1889), 590. 54 The imprint reads “Le Mantellate” rather than Regina Coeli in reference to a convent that had been demolished in order to construct new buildings for both the press and a women’s jail. 55 Roberto Giulianelli, L’industria carceraria in Italia: Lavoro e produzione nelle prigioni da Giolitti a Mussolini (Milan, 2008), 93.
The experience of male inmates in Rome typified in many ways the broader Italian experience. Except for Tuscany, where hard labour was abolished before unification, only a minority of men were sentenced to reclusion in modern penitentiaries before the passage of the new Criminal Code in 1889. The major- ity continued to perform the same types of hard labour inherited from the old regime states in conditions that were often brutal and violent. Symbolic of the traditional nature of male punishment was the use of fetters, a requirement that remained in force even after 1889 for inmates sentenced to hard labour under the old penal code.56 Only in 1902 were chains absolutely abolished. However, as the example of Regina Coeli demonstrates, men’s penitentiaries became the focus of reform efforts by the late nineteenth century with the building of new facilities and the expansion of schools and libraries in the old. Of course, some male institutions remained squalid and incidents of violence by staff against inmates continued to make newspaper headlines. But com- pared to the stasis imposed on female prisoners, men had a wider opportunity for training in industrial or skilled labour at higher wages.
Conclusion
Can the Italian pattern of gendered punishment and convict labour be gener- alized to the rest of the world? The Italian experience was certainly not univer- sal although it may turn out to epitomize the development of prison labour in Catholic nations that shared a monastic tradition. Yet even in its particulari- ties, it challenges a paradigm common to prison history that posits a clear and radical transition from pre-modern to modern practices of punishment. The “birth of the prison” did not necessarily occur at the same time, for the same purposes, or with the same results for women and men. The Italian case thus directs our attention to three gendered issues that historians have begun to address in a fragmentary way in specialized studies of prisons in both the Western and non-Western worlds: periodization, typology, and the relation- ship of punishment to citizenship. Traditional periodization correlates the introduction of modern prison labour, with its emphasis on moral reform, with the birth of the prison. Yet the different chronologies of punishment for the two sexes make it impossible to draw up a clear time-line of the transition between corporal punishment and
56 Approximately 60 percent of all men were sentenced to forced labour until 1880, when the rate began to drop slowly. See Actes du congrès penitentiaire de Rome, Novembre 1885. 4 (3 plus appendix) vols. (Rome, 1887–1889), vol. 3, pat. 1, 471–637 (G. Cardosa).
57 O’Brien, The Promise of Punishment: Prisons in Nineteenth-Century France; Lila Caimari, “Whose Criminals are These? Church, state, and Patronatos and the rehabilitation of female convicts (Buenos Aires, 1890–1940)” The Americas, 54:2 (1997); Maria Soledad Zárate Campos, “Vicious Women, Virtuous Women: The Female Delinquent and the Santiago de Chile Correctional House, 1860–1900,” in Ricardo D. Salvatore and Carlos Aguirre, eds., The Birth of the Penitentiary in Latin America: Essays on Criminology, Prison Reform, and Social Control, 1830–1940 (Austin, 1996). 58 Freedman, Their Sisters’ Keepers: Women’s Prison Reform in America, 1830–1930; Rafter, Partial Justice: Women in State Prison, 1800–1935. 59 Zedner, Women, Crime, and Custody in Victorian England, 177–178.
During this long transition, women and men typically performed different types of work. Although Catholic and Protestant nations differed in the timing of their introduction of imprisonment for women, they exhibited a surprising uniformity in defining appropriate female tasks. These consisted of sewing, knitting, and needlework as well as the domestic duties of washing, ironing, and cleaning for themselves, the prison staff, and male inmates in other insti- tutions. Such was the agenda of the religious orders in Italy, which was accepted without opposition by the secular state. Considered consonant with female nature, these types of work prepared women simply to be wives, mothers, or servants rather than independent citizens in the new labour markets. In the Americas and Europe, the only exception to this monotonous pattern occurred in the case of African-American women, who were often subjected to much harder labour as field hands in southern states, while white women carried out less onerous domestic tasks.60 Thus for black women in the American South, and very possibly in the European colonies, race undercut any advantage of gender. In the case of men, the Italian example points to the long life of hard labour after the introduction of the modern penitentiary. Even when this legal category of punishment had been eliminated from the Italian criminal code in 1889, it continued to exist in practice at Tre Fontane and other “agricultural colonies.” The predominance of outdoor, backbreaking work was even more typical of non-Western regions as documented by Zinoman for Vietnam, Botsman for Japan, Dikötter for China, and Aguirre for Chile. In Africa, any pretense of reformative employment was absent as prisoners were recycled to private plantations as “a hidden form of forced labor.”61 Yet the working situation for men improved dramatically in Italy as penitentiaries were built and an increasing number of male convicts were sentenced to “reclusion” rather than hard labour. For these men, types of employment proliferated dur- ing the nineteenth century to include shoemaking, blacksmithing, carpentry, textile production, and printing. This variety of jobs, which were accompanied by training, contrasted with the meagre opportunities for women, which were limited to domestic work, sewing, and basket-weaving.62 Although all male jobs were not industrial, they offered training in skills that would become self-supporting for inmates after release. Thus in Italy, although women were the first to make the transition to a modern regime of prison work, this
60 Rafter, Partial Justice: Women in State Prison, 1800–1935, 151–152. 61 Florence Bernault, ed., A History of Prison and Confinement in Africa (Portsmouth, nh, 2003), 22. 62 See for example the statistics on prison work in the annual Statistica delle carceri.
Marc Buggeln
Today, Nazi concentration camps have become an international symbol for violence and terror in the modern world. This is partially due to photos taken by the Allies when they liberated the camps in 1945. Since then, Nazi concen- tration camps have become well-known as places where inmates were subjected to mass murder and extermination. This is also what is remembered by the public when thinking about camp labour, resulting in the memorable catchphrase of “extermination through work.” However, the question is whether the concentration camp system has been considered too much from its final phase, meaning the last months before the end of the war, and whether this catchphrase of “extermination through work” actually goes too far in implying premeditated intention. The main focus of the following exploration is to survey the role of labour in the concentration camp system from 1933 to 1945. Here, an important resource is the large body of research devoted to at least the second half of the war, when camp labour acquired its greatest significance. Besides the many such relevant studies, there is also a broad range of primary source materials, thanks especially to the Nuremberg Trials, which required the compilation of exten- sive source materials. It particular, the concentration camp system played an essential role in the fourth of the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials, which focussed on the ss-wvha or “Central Economic and Administrative Department of the ss.” There were also many other trials of personnel from almost every major concentration camp and their subcamps. Less research has been devoted to camp labour before 1941/42, and much less to the prewar period. There are no broader studies for this time, and the source materials are much more disparate. This analysis will also look at connections to other forms of voluntary and involuntary labour within the Nazi system. The underlying thesis is that the use of camp labour needs to be considered within the system’s overall labour deployment policies. Analysis will also consider how much this may have been specific to the Nazi state, which was closely intertwined with the special characteristics of the concentration camp system.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004285026_014
Concentration Camps Before the War
The concentration camps played a central role from the moment the Nazis took power, and they maintained their importance, albeit with evolving functions, until the fall of the Third Reich. Their establishment was based upon the “Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State,” issued on 28 February 1933, commonly known as the “Reichstag Fire Decree.” This declared a civil state of emergency in the German Reich, enabling the detention of political opponents without trial.1 The Nazi leadership and local Nazi cadres used this decree to send political opponents to concentration camps, mainly targeting communists, social democrats and labour union activists. In the beginning, there were about one hundred concentration camps. Many of them were established in abandoned factories, prisons, work- houses, country estates, castles, schools, barracks, and even on a ship. The diversity of architecture was matched by the diversity of administrative struc- tures. Camps were established by various organizations, including the ss, the sa, the Gestapo, and several local state ministries. They had one main goal in common: the consolidation of power through violence and terror. But in com- parison to later concentration camps, these so-called “preventative detention camps” were not sites of routine killing, although murders certainly did take place. One of the first camps was established at Dachau, originally for the long- term imprisonment of political opponents, under the authority of Heinrich Himmler, who was head of the ss and also acting chief of police in Munich at the time; here, just 13 inmates were murdered from mid-April to the end of May in 1933.2 According to Nikolaus Wachsmann, between 150,000 and 200,000 people were subjected to temporary detention without trial in the year 1933.3 Starting in mid-1934, these “preventative detention camps” fell increasingly under the centralized control of the ss. In July of 1934, the camp commandant at Dachau, Theodor Eicke, was named head of the “Concentration Camp Inspectorate” by Himmler. Eicke had already established a system of discipline and punishment at Dachau in 1933 that would be emulated by all other
1 An important aspect here was the concept of “Schutzhaft” (“preventative detention”), which was not mentioned within the decree itself, but which became a common reason for concentration camp imprisonment after April 1933, Martin Broszat, “Nationalsozialistische Konzentrationslager 1933–1945,” in idem./Hans-Adolf Jacobsen/Helmut Krausnick, eds., Anatomie des ss-Staates (Munich, 1967), vol. 2, 11–133, 13. 2 Wolfgang Benz/Barbara Distel, eds., Der Ort des Terrors (Munich, 2005), vol. 2, 235. 3 Nikolaus Wachsmann, “The Dynamics of Destruction. The Development of the Concentration Camps, 1933–45,” in idem./Jane Caplan, eds., Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany. The New Histories (London, 2010), 17–43, 18.
Labour in Concentration Camps Before 1938
As early as 1933, the system of discipline and punishment established by Eicke at Dachau included compulsory labour for all inmates, a requirement that the
4 Karin Orth, Das System der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager. Eine politische Organisationsgeschichte (Hamburg, 1999), 26–33. 5 Ulrich Herbert, “Von der Gegnerbekämpfung zur ‘rassischen Generalprävention’. ‘Schutzhaft’ und Konzentrationslager in der Konzeption der Gestapo-Führung 1933–1939,” in idem/Karin Orth/Christoph Dieckmann, eds., Die nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager. Entwicklung und Struktur (Göttingen 1998), vol. 1, 60–86. Julia Hörath notes that Herbert draws too sharp a line, as so-called “antisocials” and the “work-shy” were being interned in camps as early as 1933: Julia Hörath, “Terrorinstrument der ‘Volksgemeinschaft’? kz-Haft für ‘Asoziale’ und ‘Berufsverbrecher’ 1933 bis 1937/38,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 60 (2012), 513–532. 6 Wachsmann, Dynamics; Orth, System, 23–66; Johannes Tuchel, Konzentrationslager. Organisationsgeschichte und Funktion der ‘Inspektion der Konzentrationslager’ 1934–1938 (Boppard/Rhine, 1991); Klaus Drobisch/Günther Wieland, System der Konzentrationslager 1933–1939 (Berlin, 1993).
7 Falk Pingel, Häftlinge unter ss-Herrschaft. Widerstand, Selbstbehauptung und Vernichtung im Konzentrationslager (Hamburg, 1978), 35. 8 Hermann Kaienburg, Die Wirtschaft der ss (Berlin, 2003), 114–129. 9 Paul Moore, “‘Man hat es sich viel schlimmer vorgestellt’. German Concentration Camps in Nazi Propaganda,” in Christiane Hess et.al., eds., Kontinuitäten und Brüche. Neue Perspektiven zur Geschichte der ns-Konzentrationslager (Berlin, 2011), 99–114; Falk Pingel, “Konzeption und Praxis der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager,” in Herbert et al., eds., Die nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager, vol. 1, 148–163. 158. After 1934, there were far fewer reports concerning the camps, although sporadic press articles still appeared until war broke out. After that point, the German press fell silent about the camps. 10 Similarly: Michael Zimmermann, “Arbeit in den Konzentrationslagern, Kommentierende Bemerkungen,” in Herbert et.al., eds., Die nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager, vol. 2, S. 730–751, 730.
At Dachau there were craftsmen’s workshops that could outshine any big factory. In return for miserable rations, the prisoners produced great masses of civilian suits, uniforms, boys’ clothing, suede trousers, utility jackets, breeches and new fatigues. During my own internment alone, the carpentry workshop produced thousands of lockers for military barracks…13½ hours of work everyday, in order to manufacture products that should have represented a welcome source of work and income for the struggling trades sector.11
There were also conflicts when Dachau workshop products were brought to market, as local craftsmen protested against the unusually low prices that came from using unpaid inmate labour. Protestors claimed that jobs were being destroyed, and since unemployment rates were still high, this was a sensitive issue that forced the ss to make concessions. However, these argu- ments dwindled after the start of the armaments boom and full employment. From 1933 to 1945, Himmler consistently claimed that concentration camps were primarily focussed on re-educating inmates; an early and revealing light on this assertion is cast by an official reply to a plea for clemency from the wife of Josef Merk, who was a bricklayer imprisoned at Dachau:
The bricklayer Josef Merk is a highly industrious and capable tradesman. His conduct in camp is excellent and has given no cause for objection. Nonetheless, because we are performing urgent construction work, Merk is still required. Therefore, his release cannot be effectuated before the 15th of December.12
However, at several other early concentration camps, labour often played less of an economic role than at Dachau.
The Development of ss Business Enterprises and New Working Conditions After 1938
It was only in 1937, when full employment had largely been achieved in the Reich, that the ss was faced with demands to use the inmates not only for developing its own camps and workshops, but also for the benefit of the State.
11 Ecker quoted in Hans-Günther Richardi, Schule der Gewalt. Das Konzentrationslager Dachau (Munich, 1995), 84. 12 Ecker quoted in Richardi, Schule, 84.
The ss responded by collaborating with Albert Speer, who had become head of the “General Construction Inspectorate for the Reich Capital” on 30 January 1937, under the orders of Hitler, with sole responsibility for redesigning Berlin. However, due to the accelerating military buildup and the shortage of labour and construction materials, Speer’s projects were threatened with failure from day one. Himmler offered to help with this situation, suggesting that inmate labour be used to supply Speer with granite and bricks. Over the course of 1937/38, Speer and Himmler came to an agreement. Because of this cooperative effort, Himmler and Eicke were able to silence most criticism of the concentration camps, and also ensure that the ss kept control of the camp labour force.13 On 29 April 1938, the “German Earth and Stone Works,” known by its German abbreviation “DESt,” was founded by Arthur Ahrens and Dr. Walter Salpeter, who both had the ss rank of Sturmbannführer and would together play the role of official proprietors. However, the DESt was under the de facto control of Himmler and his chief administrator Oswald Pohl. This corporate structure was devised because the ss was not a corporation in its own right, and all its legal business had to be handled by either the Nazi Party or its treasurer.14 With the DESt however, Himmler wanted to make sure there were no influences from outside the ss. The DESt thus became a launching pad for developing many more ss business enterprises; as a whole, however, these would achieve little economic success. Shortly after its founding, the DESt signed a contract with the General Construction Inspectorate on 30 June 1938, in which Speer guaranteed the purchase of 120 million bricks per annum for ten years, with the ss receiving an advance payment of 9.5 million Reichsmarks. After this, there was much hectic activity in the ss, in order to start production of construction materials. All plans were based upon the exploitation of forced inmate labour. On 6 July 1938, there was a ground-breaking ceremony for what was planned to be the world’s largest brickyard at the time, located in Oranienburg, just two kilome- tres from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. A new main camp had also been established by May 1938 in Bavaria at Flossenbürg, where inmates mainly did quarry work at the nearby granite pits. Austria was chosen for another concentration camp, also at a location mainly chosen for its proximity to nearby quarries, with the first inmates arriving at Mauthausen in August 1938. Soon after arrival, they were put to work in the camp’s quarries. In late 1939, the
13 Jan-Erik Schulte, Zwangsarbeit und Vernichtung: Das Wirtschaftsimperium der ss. Oswald Pohl und das ss-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt 1933–1945 (Paderborn, 2001), 111–114. 14 Kaienburg, Wirtschaft, 455–461.
Outbreak of War and the Resulting System of Unfree Labour
Soon after the ss started developing larger business enterprises, the aggressive foreign policy pursued by the Nazis finally led to the outbreak of World War II in September 1939. Even though German society had already become strongly geared towards a war economy, the outbreak of war nonetheless brought a complete change to the entire situation, which ultimately affected the concen- tration camps too. With the initial successes of the German military, the German elites were already planning what to do with the conquered European continent. In essence, these plans envisioned the establishment of a hierarchical, ethnically based system in Europe, with the German Reich as the nucleus with the high- est standard of living. Second rank would be assigned to the countries of north- ern and western Europe, which act as secondary industrial zones and have a relatively good standard of living. The next rank would include the countries of southeastern Europe, which would focus on basic raw materials and agricul- tural products. The lowest rank would be given to the General Government territory in Occupied Poland – and also to Soviet territories that Germany would occupy later – where the situation would be comparable to that of the former German colonies in Africa. The population of eastern Europe would be kept at the lowest possible level of education and forced to perform
15 Transcript of departmental leaders meeting at the Reich Main Security Office on 21 Sep 1939 in: bab, R 58/825. Cf. also Ulrich Herbert, Fremdarbeiter. Politik und Praxis des “Ausländer-Einsatzes” in der Kriegswirtschaft des Dritten Reiches (Bonn, 1999), 79 and Ludolf Herbst, Der Totale Krieg und die Ordnung der Wirtschaft. Die Kriegswirtschaft im Spannungsfeld von Politik, Ideologie und Propaganda 1939–1945 (Stuttgart, 1982), 123. 16 Armin Nolzen, “Die nsdap, der Krieg und die deutsche Gesellschaft,” in Jörg Echternkamp, ed., Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg; Vol. 9/1: Die deutsche Kriegsgesellschaft 1939 bis 1945 (Munich 2004), 99–193, 144ff. 17 Herbert, Fremdarbeiter, 87–93.
Concentration Camps from the Outbreak of War until the Summer of 1941
While Germany’s wartime economy became dependent on increasingly diverse forms of forced labour, the concentration camp system also saw further expansion, in a draconian effort to neutralize any Germans who might be considered a threat to maintaining military strength, and to suppress all resis- tance movements in the occupied territories. The main focus of this expan- sion, and also of the presumed opponents, was on the soil of the German Reich and in the occupied territories of Eastern Europe. In Western Europe, it was not until the tides of war began turning in 1942, and then especially in 1943, that increasing local resistance led to larger numbers of arrests, so that new concentration camps became established in countries like the Netherlands. In 1940, the expansion of concentration camps was still closely connected to industrial projects. For example, the establishment of the Gross-Rosen camp in May 1940 and the Natzweiler camp in August 1940, both initially as subcamps of Sachsenhausen, were also motivated by the quarries at both loca- tions. Of greater significance for further developments in the concentration camp system would be the establishment of the Auschwitz concentration camp. The camp’s first assignment was to receive 10,000 Polish prisoners, most of whom would be transferred later to other camps in the “old” part of the Reich. Auschwitz was also meant as an execution site for Polish resistance fighters.20 In late 1940, the managers of I.G. Farben in eastern Silesia began
18 Ibid., 101. 19 Ibid., 111. 20 Sybille Steinbacher, Auschwitz. Geschichte und Nachgeschichte (Munich, 2007); Waclaw Dlugoborski/Franciszek Piper, eds., Auschwitz 1940–1945. Studien zur Geschichte des
Invasion of the Soviet Union and the Permanent Shortage of Labour
As the year turned from 1941 to ’42, it became clear to the German leadership that arms production would have to be organized differently, in order to main- tain any hope of winning the war. When the German offensive failed at the gates of Moscow in late 1941, it marked the definitive end of the “Blitzkrieg” concept, which had been born during the French campaign as a product of simple necessity.22 A hike in arms production was needed, and it was generally agreed that this would require more centralized management. As the new Minister of Armaments, Albert Speer was assigned the task of achieving this goal.23 In November 1941, the German military decided to revoke plans that
Konzentrations- und Vernichtungslagers Auschwitz, 5 vols. (Oswiecim, 1999); Marc Buggeln, Auschwitz, in: Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence, [online], published on 25 November 2011, last accessed 29 May 2013,
Geopolitical Planning, Extermination of the Jews and Cooperation With Industry: Transformation of the Concentration Camp System, 1941/42
In the first months of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the ss felt sure of victory, which sent them into a rapture of planning for the future. In accor- dance with “Generalplan Ost,” they projected the development of huge German settlements in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union. The workers for this project would be Soviet prisoners of war, who Himmler wanted to retrain as construction workers in concentration camps. A central aspect of this plan was the expansion of the Auschwitz and Majdanek concentration camps. On 26 September 1941, the order was issued to build a new camp at Auschwitz- Birkenau, which was to start by accommodating 50,000 prisoners of war, with room to expand its capacity to 150,000, and later even 200,000. Construction work on the Auschwitz II camp complex started at Birkenau in October 1941. However, the 10,000 prisoners of war who arrived soon afterward would die
172–196. A very condensed description of Speer’s rise, ignoring the economic background, in: Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1936–1945 (Stuttgart, 2000), 662–666. 24 Herbert, Fremdarbeiter, 177. 25 Figures from: Ibid., 209.
26 Buggeln, Auschwitz; Schulte, Zwangsarbeit; Michael Thad Allen, The Business of Genocide. The ss, Slave Labor, and Concentration Camps (Chapel Hill 2002). 27 Bernhard Strebel, Das kz Ravensbrück. Geschichte eines Lagerkomplexes (Paderborn, 2003).
28 Ulrich Herbert, “Arbeit und Vernichtung Ökonomisches Interesse und Primat der ‘Weltanschauung’ im Nationalsozialismus,” in Dan Diner, ed., Ist der Nationalsozialismus Geschichte? Zu Historisierung und Historikerstreit (Frankfurt/Main, 1987), 198–236, 222f.; Orth, System, 171–175; Marc Buggeln, Slave Labor in Nazi Concentration Camps (Oxford, 2014), 18–21.
29 Secret order from SiPo and sd (“security police” and “security service”) chiefs to all super- visors, inspectors and commanders of the SiPo and sd, issued on 17 Dec 1942, in: StAN, 1063(d)-PS. 30 Nikolaus Wachsmann, “‘Annihilation through Labour’. The Killing of State Prisoners in the Third Reich,” Journal of Modern History, 71 (1999), 624–659, 636f. 31 Ibid., 651. 32 Orth, System, 192. 33 Lutz Budrass, “Der Schritt über die Schwelle. Ernst Heinkel, das Werk Oranienburg und der Einstieg in die Beschäftigung von Häftlingen,” in Winfried Meyer/Klaus Neitmann, eds., Zwangsarbeit während der ns-Zeit in Berlin und Brandenburg. Formen, Funktionen und Rezeption (Potsdam, 20019), 129–162.
Moving Underground: The Mittelbau-Dora Camp
After the inmate population had reached a total of 224,000 in August 1943, the ss launched another expansion of the concentration camp system. The nature of slave labour acquired a new character after the arms industry began moving underground. As the Allies escalated their aerial bombing campaigns, the urgency of relocating German arms production to safer places increased. The first sector affected would be Germany’s rocket industry. In the summer of 1943, several key production facilities had been hit by numerous Allied bomb attacks. Shortly thereafter, it was decided that a new central rocket factory would be built in the former mining tunnels near Nordhausen.34 The work of preparing these tunnels for rocket production was mostly accom- plished by concentration camp labourers. This project saw the establishment of Mittelbau-Dora, which was a subcamp of Buchenwald, and by November 1943, its population had risen to around 10,000 inmates. Until the above-ground barracks were finally finished, these workers had to spend their lives underground. For most inmates, these condi- tions would mean death within four to eight weeks. By the spring of 1944, some 3,000 inmates had lost their lives. Another 3,000 completely exhausted inmates were shipped by the ss to Majdanek and Bergen-Belsen. Later, mortality rates would sink significantly, remaining below 200 deaths per month from May 1944 to January 1945, and with a generally rising population. This turnaround began in the spring of 1944, when Mittelbau-Dora started shifting its focus to manufacturing. Whereas tunnel construction was more about speed than precision, the new work dealt with fine-tuned machinery.35
34 Florian Freund, “Arbeitslager Zement.” Das Konzentrationslager Ebensee und die Raketenrüstung (Vienna, 1991), 58–59; Jens-Christian Wagner, Produktion des Todes. Das kz Mittelbau-Dora (Göttingen, 2001), 86–88. 35 Wagner, Produktion, 181–220 and 647.
In contrast to the high mortality rates seen in the spring of 1943, the thou- sands of deaths at Mittelbau-Dora did not provoke concern or criticism among the ss, state authorities, or industry representatives: in fact, quite the opposite. In this case, it seemed a worthwhile price for building the facility as quickly as possible. A week after visiting the underground factory, Speer sent his congratulations:
Dear Mr. Kammler, the head of Special Committee A4, Degenkolb, tells me that you have managed to transform the underground facility…in a nearly impossible interval of just two months, going from a raw state to a factory with no peer in Europe… Therefore, I take this occasion to extend my highest regards for this truly unique achievement.36
Allied Bombing Campaigns and the Jäger Task Force
When the German military retreated from the Soviet territories in the spring of 1944, the supply of civilian forced labourers dried up; this shortage, com- bined with the need to relocate the German arms industry underground, led to a boom in demand for concentration camp labour. As a result, the ss accelerated the expansion of camp populations even further. While the total inmate population was just 224,000 in the summer of 1943 and probably around 300,000 in March 1944, by August 1944 it had jumped to 524,826.37 The majority of new inmates were now being sent to subcamps soon after arrival. This altered the population ratio between the main camps and the subcamps. By autumn or winter 1944, most camp complexes were housing 50 to 80 per cent of their populations at subcamps, with few exceptions.38 A major factor behind this development was the decision to move the aircraft industry underground. From 20 to 26 February 1944, the western Allies conducted massive bombing campaigns that targeted German aircraft factories. The heavy damage to these factories would lead to hectic activity among the German leadership. By 1 March 1944, the Luftwaffe and the Ministry of Armaments had founded a new interdepartmental committee with extensive powers, known as the “Jäger Task
36 Dispatch from Speer to Kammler on 17 Dec 1943, in: bab, R 3/1585, Bl. 32. 37 Status report from the ss-wvha on 15 Aug 1944, in: StAN, NO-399. 38 Exceptions included Bergen-Belsen and Hinzert, which had hardly any subcamps. In the case of Natzweiler, the main camp had to be evacuated in September 1944, but the subcamps continued operating, so that 100% of inmates were then in subcamps.
Force” – Jäger being a type of fighter plane.39 By 9 March 1944, Himmler had made a pledge to Göring that he would provide 100,000 inmates for the aircraft industry.40 The ss intended to take on twenty of the largest and most impor- tant projects for moving the industry underground. The urgency of moving Jäger production underground was also demonstrated by the Nazi leadership’s willingness to postpone a central ideological goal, that of finally making the German Reich “free of Jews.” In early April, after authorising the construction of giant Jäger factory, Hitler declared that he would personally order Himmler to deliver 100,000 Hungarian Jews to build the project.41 Of the Hungarian Jews who had been selected in Auschwitz for labour, some would now be sent to work in the German Reich, many in the projects of the Jäger Task Force. By the end of the war, between 80 and 90 thousand inmates had been forced to labour for this committee. Two months later, the Allies chose a new strategic target. On 28/29 May 1944, Allied squads attacked Germany’s coal liquefaction plants. Then on the evening of 30 May, Hitler named a “General Commissioner for Urgent Measures,” Edmund Geilenberg, who was granted extensive powers for the “speedy elimi- nation of bombing damage in key production sectors.”42 This meant that camp labour would now be used for rebuilding petroleum facilities too. Up to 45,000 inmates may have worked under Geilenberg at any one time, with a running total of 50 to 60 thousand between May 1944 and the end of the war.
The Final Months
In the autumn of 1944, it was becoming clear that the war was hopeless for Germany. Deliveries of raw materials to the armaments industry began to falter. Nonetheless, the ss maintained its policy of filling up the concentration camps with inmates. The total population rose to 714,211 in January 1945, of whom 202,674 were females.43 The evacuation of concentration camps in the East and West meant that within the German Reich itself, the main camps saw
39 On the Jäger Task Force (“Jägerstab”): Bertrand Perz, “Projekt Quarz.” Steyr-Daimler-Puch und das Konzentrationslager Melk (Vienna, 1991), 129–154; Wagner, Produktion, 92–111. 40 Dispatch from Himmler to Göring on 9 Mar 1944, in: StAN, 1584(III)-PS. 41 Minutes of conference with the Führer on 6/7 Apr 1944, in: bab, R 3/1509. Also: Herbert, Vernichtung, 413; Christian Gerlach/Götz Aly, Das letzte Kapitel. Der Mord an den ungarischen Juden (Stuttgart, 2002), 159. 42 Unpublished decree from the Führer on 30 May 1944, in: bab, R 3112/127. 43 Status reports from the ss-wvha for 1 Jan and 15 Jan 1945, in: bab, ns 3/439.
Work in the Subcamps (1942–45)
In his influential study, Wolfgang Sofsky described concentration camp labour as essentially ineffective, concluding that it could be best described as “terror work,” because “violence is not a tool for work – work is a tool for violence.”45 This is at least partially true of labour in prewar concentration camps, but not for the labour of most subcamps. Here, the work was done largely in the context of projects relevant to the war or the arms industry, and in the daily operations of the subcamps, accomplishing this work was much more impor- tant that simply terrorising inmates for sadistic pleasure. The violence was much more connected to the way the work was organized. It is also not true that slave labour by inmates was always ineffective. Claims that inmate pro- ductivity was no more than 15 per cent of German worker productivity, as cited by Karin Orth, can be proven wrong.46 Mark Spoerer has already demonstrated
44 Marc Buggeln, Das System der kz-Außenlager. Krieg, Sklavenarbeit und Massengewalt (Bonn, 2012), 146–161. Free online:
47 Mark Spoerer, Zwangsarbeit unterm Hakenkreuz. Ausländische Zivilarbeiter, Kriegsgefangene und Häftlinge im Deutschen Reich und im besetzten Europa 1939–1945 (Stuttgart, 2001), 186. 48 Lutz Budrass/Manfred Grieger, “Die Moral der Effizienz. Die Beschäftigung von kz-Häftlingen am Beispiel des Volkswagenwerkes und der Henschel Flugzeug-Werke,” Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte (1993) 2, S. 89–136, 129. Similar findings concerning compatibility and functionality when using concentration camp labour in modern production facilities: Budrass, Schritt über die Schwelle; Michael Thad Allen, “Flexible Production at Concentration Camp Ravensbrück,” Past & Present, 165 (1999), 182–217. 49 More detailed: Marc Buggeln, “Were kz-Prisoners Slaves? Possibilities and Limits of Comparisons and Global-Historic Approaches,” International Review of Social History, 53 (2008): 101–129.
50 Rainer Fröbe, “kz-Häftlinge als Reserve qualifizierter Arbeitskraft. Eine späte Entdeckung der deutschen Industrie und ihre Folgen,” in Herbert et al., eds., Die nationalsozialist- ischen Konzentrationslager, vol. 2, 636–681.
(or 9.2 per cent) had a more specific job description, while most of the others were classed as unskilled labourers.51 It should be emphasized that the crude technologies observed at some inmate workplaces was not just due to malice on the part of business owners or the ss, or motivated by a deliberate policy of “extermination through work”; instead, it resulted from the very nature of slave work itself. While a business owner may oppress the workforce for his own interests, he remains untouch- able because of the guards, so aggression by slave labourers then becomes redirected to the owner’s property instead.52 This is why businesses tried to adapt to slave labour by providing tools that were extremely durable, if rather crude, whenever the work allowed it. However, it would be mistaken to say that all subcamps restricted slave labourers to using such crude technologies.53 Some of the workplaces were in high-tech arms production. Even among construction sites using inmate labour, many featured the most modern technologies in Europe, according to the engineers working there. In general, construction work was subject to a kind “exertion monitoring,” in which German masters and foremen, as well as “Kapos,” would constantly check to see if inmates were working hard enough. This need for endless super- vision would often result in a great deal of arbitrary violence against the inmates. However, for the inmates, one advantage of this work surveillance system was that there was no specific end product to be submitted for final inspection. So as soon as the supervisor left the vicinity, there was no more reason to continue working hard, unless one feared the supervisor’s return.54 Therefore, whenever inmates were free of surveillance, at least temporarily, they could develop a system to warn each other about approaching guards, which would allow them to take breaks in between. The conditions of con- struction work generally meant that businesses had little commitment to any particular inmate. Inmates were usually assigned to a business for one specific construction project, and then removed again after completion. Furthermore, contracts with the ss, such as those for the Jäger construction projects, were designed to encourage maximum exploitation of each inmate. If a business could push an inmate into achieving 50% of a German worker’s productivity,
51 Buggeln, Slave Labor. 52 For many inmates, another reason for sabotage was that Germany was waging war on their homelands, so sabotaging Germany’s war production was a kind of patriotic self-defence. 53 Sofsky, Ordnung, 217f. 54 Marc Buggeln, “Tödliche Zone kz-Außenlager: Raumorganisation und die Be- und Entgrenzung von Gewalt 1942–1945,” in Jörg Baberowski/Gabriele Metzler, eds., Gewal träume. Soziale Ordnungen im Ausnahmezustand (Frankfurt/Main 2012), 189–204.
55 Dispatch from Hans Kammler to the heads of ss Special Inspectorates, ss Senior Commands and Construction Offices concerning A Projects and B Projects, on 12 Aug 1944, in: bab, R 13 VIII/243. 56 Wagner, Produktion.
The Guards
While some of the early camps of 1933 also had guards from the sa and the Gestapo, it was not long before the ss assumed exclusive responsibility for guarding concentration camps. Under the supervision of Theodor Eicke,57 ss camp personnel were taught that inmates were political enemies and should be persecuted as such. The main goal was either to break them and then maybe release them, or else to keep them imprisoned until they died. In contrast, the exploitation of labour was hardly mentioned in the guard training program. Guards were to force inmates into working, but actual productivity was not a high priority. Even after the ss developed its own business enterprises in 1938, there was only a small change in guard habits. It was only in 1942 that the directives of the ss leadership began to reflect a greater emphasis on exploiting labour. From now on, everyday camp life was to be made more efficient, by reducing unnecessary harshness and exploiting inmate labour to the maximum possible extent. Furthermore, if the concentra- tion camp system was to be expanded as desired, then the camp mortality rates needed to be reduced. It was not at all easy to convince long-established ss guards that their violent methods had to be reoriented towards achieving more practical goals. The ss leadership tried to persuade them with a combi- nation of monitoring, threats and praise. This monitoring was achieved by a new system of comprehensive statistical reports, especially concerning the labour figures and death rates for each camp.58 The guard system continued evolving along with the war, the exploitation of labour, and the expansion of the subcamp system. The constant rise in camp populations led to an increased demand for guard personnel. In the early phase of the war, the ss was able to meet this demand by recruiting ethnic Germans from outside the Reich itself. However, by 1944 there was a major shortage of suitable personnel, made worse when some of the more experi- enced guard squads were commandeered for frontline warfare. Since inmate labour was also used at Jäger subcamps for important military production, the ss finally convinced the military to help with its staffing shortage. The German military agreed to supplement the camp guards with soldiers who could no longer serve on the frontline. The camps then became increasingly dependent on soldiers from the military, so that by the end of the war, over half of camp
57 Niels Weise, Eicke: Eine ss-Karriere zwischen Nervenklinik, kz-System und Waffen-ss (Paderborn, 2013). 58 Buggeln, Slave Labour, 27–32.
59 Dedicated to this question is the issue 13 of the Beiträge zur Geschichte der nationalsozial- istischen Verfolgung in Norddeutschland (2012). See also: Bertrand Perz, “Wehrmacht und kz-Bewachung,” Mittelweg, 36:4 (1995) 4, S.69–82. 60 Elissa Mailänder Koslov, Gewalt im Dienstalltag. Die ss-Aufseherinnen des Konzentrations- und Vernichtungslagers Majdanek 1942–1944 (Hamburg, 2009); Simone Erpel, eds., Im Gefolge der ss. Aufseherinnen des Frauen-kz-Ravensbrück (Berlin, 2007). 61 Buggeln, Slave Labor, 216–218.
The Inmates
In the prewar years, the main objective of concentration camp inmates was to avoid the violent attacks of ss guards. The relatively few deaths that did occur were often caused by physical violence. In contrast, no inmates died of starva- tion. This would change completely as the war progressed. Towards the war’s end, the situation had become so bad that for the majority of inmates, food rations were insufficient for supporting continued survival. Even if one could avoid the violence of the guards, simple existence still meant a constant strug- gle between life and death. Therefore, the life of most inmates was mainly focussed on just surviving to the next day. This involved paying close attention to food distribution and trying to get extra food during the course of the day. In terms of work, the goal was to avoid wasting any physical energy. There was no wage incentive, and the reward system often gave such low-quality items that inmates lost interest in them. The majority of inmates considered the Nazi system or the German people to be the enemy, and thus had no inter- est in increasing productivity – on the contrary, they would rather sabotage German war production. However, this was a very risky proposition, due to the threat of capital punishment. Inmate rebellions were completely out of the question, due to the overwhelming firepower and violent tendencies of the guards. Only Auschwitz experienced an inmate rebellion, but this was at the camps’ extermination section, in the face of certain death. There were also isolated incidents of smaller collective protests. Resistance by male inmates was handled with particular brutality, such as at one subcamp of Flossenbürg, where the ss murdered Soviet hunger strikers by letting their place of refuge burn down and shooting the ones who tried to escape.62 Until 1940/41, concentration camps inside the German Reich had an inmate population that was mostly German. This then changed very quickly, so that by the end of the war, Germans made up less than one quarter of the population at every major camp. At the end of the war, the two largest nationalities at concentration camps within the German Reich were the Soviets and the Poles. The third-largest nationality was often the French. The Jewish populations of Auschwitz and Majdanek began to quickly rise in 1942, until they eventually became the largest inmate group at these camps. It was not until the summer of 1944 that camps within the German Reich began receiving Jewish inmates, but then in great numbers, especially females. By early 1945, some 30% of the inmates were female, and the majority of these were classified as Jewish.
62 Ulrich Fritz, “Mülsen St. Micheln,” in Benz/Distel, eds., Der Ort des Terrors (Munich 2006), vol. 4, 197–200.
From the ss viewpoint, there was a racial hierarchy among inmates, with eastern Europeans, especially Jews, at the lowest end. However, this hierarchy was not always very significant for inmate labour. The ss was especially concerned about potential rebellions among male inmates, so attempts were made to play different nationalities against one another, for example by assigning “Kapo” positions to a particular nationality. Extra care was taken to avoid establishing subcamps with homogenous nation- alities, so the ss tried to achieve maximum possible diversity when assembling work units. According to eyewitness reports from many different camps, the ss often succeeded in creating animosity between groups of inmates. This was further promoted by the shortage of supplies, so that the survival of one group depended on competing with other groups for food.63
Conclusion
The concentration camp system was a logical consequence of the Nazi political system. National Socialism was a dictatorship based on mobilization, characterized by movement, not rigidity. The system was constantly changing, always adapting to new circumstances. The regime’s central goals were the consolidation of power, the reshaping of German society, and the creation of a European empire under German leadership. This last goal could only be achieved through military conquest: therefore, both racism and war were fundamental components of National Socialism.64 The concentration camp system evolved alongside the pursuit of these goals. The camp system was highly adaptable, which was a major reason why such camps were so pervasive under the Nazi dictatorship. Recent scholarly research has demonstrated that this erratic course of development cannot simply be seen as a sign of the State’s decay, but was instead quite capable of making significant strides towards achieving major goals; however, one should also not go too far in ascribing extreme efficiency to the Nazi system.65
63 Buggeln, Slave Labor, 143–147. 64 Previously noted by Ludolf Herbst, Das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933–1945 (Frankfurt/Main, 1996). 65 Sven Reichardt/Wolfgang Seibel, “Radikalität und Stabilität: Herrschen und Verwalten im Nationalsozialismus,” in idem., eds., Der prekäre Staat. Herrschen und Verwalten im Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt/Main, 2011), 7–28; Rüdiger Hachtmann, “Elastisch, dynamisch und von katastrophaler Effizienz – zur Struktur der Neuen Staatlichkeit des Nationalsozialismus,” in ibid., 29–74; Rüdiger Hachtmann/Winfried Süss, “Editorial:
Especially in wartime, governmental policy tends to focus on specific goals, which are to be achieved through a concentration of available resources. This is often successful, but only at the cost of neglecting other areas, which may suddenly become prioritized by another policy shift. Overall, however, these volatile, ad hoc policy shifts tend to deplete resources in the long run. This was especially true of how inmate labour was deployed for the German arms industry. The case of Mittelbau-Dora demonstrates the willingness of the Nazi regime to sacrifice the lives of camp inmates in pursuing the rapid con- struction of an underground rocket factory. Although this ruined workforce might be missed later, the thought did not even occur to the project planners, who were simply focussed on quickly meeting the next target. During the con- struction phase of Mittelbau-Dora, this did amount to “extermination through work” in practice, but it would be wrong to assume that this was an intentional policy. No one was planning to kill these inmates through work, and the ss did not select one despised group for deployment at that subcamp; instead, conditions on the ground led to a situation where guards and project planners were willing to accept that most inmates would die. There was no master plan that dictated the death of inmates through work, but when the situation did finally result in massive mortalities, it was only when these became excessively counterproductive that efforts were finally made to contain them. It was this radical destructiveness that distinguished concentration camp labour from other forms of unfree labour in the Nazi system, and also from many other forms of convict labour in general. This is why the Nazi use of concentration camp labour is of great significance for conducting a qualitative evaluation of National Socialism. However, in quantitative terms, camp labour had little significance for the overall German war economy. Even in those final months when the war was already lost and the use of camp labour was at its absolute peak, camp inmates still made up less than 3% of the workforce in the German Reich. If one considers the relatively low productivity of inmate labourers, as well as their late deployment in arms production, one would be safe in guessing that inmate labour accounted for less than 1% of German arms production. In contrast, the legions of unfree foreign labourers accounted for some 30% of the overall workforce in the German Reich in late 1944, thereby playing a crucial role in maintaining the German war economy during its final phase. In the end, the deployment of camp labour represented a last radical mea- sure for maintaining the war economy, implemented by a Nazi dictatorship
Kommissare im ns-Herrschaftssystem. Probleme und Perspektiven der Forschung,” Beiträge zur Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus, 22 (2006), 9–27.
Lynne Viola
Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s ground-breaking Gulag Archipelago, published in English in the early 1970s, provided a generation of scholars and students with what has become the classic depiction of Stalin’s penal labour system. Solzhenitsyn wrote about the Gulag as a specifically Soviet phenomenon, with its origins in the October 1917 Revolution and the very ideology of the “dictator- ship of the proletariat.” His Gulag was an archipelago, isolated from society at large and located in the most remote regions of the Soviet Union.2 In 2003, Anne Applebaum published the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag: A History, generally following Solzhenitsyn’s periodization, thesis, and categorizations, but with access to selected archival sources and a far broader range of published sources.3 By that time, however, the standard understanding of the Gulag was already, to a great extent, in the process of revision, remolding, and expansion as Russian and foreign scholars began intensive work in the archives, producing dissertations and monographs and publishing new memoirs and collections of archival documents. Traditional western understandings of the Gulag turned out to be incomplete, unintentionally biased by sources, and full of inflated statistics. Moreover, the very brutalities of the system along with the passions of Cold War, have meant that our understanding of the Gulag long remained, in a very real sense, outside of history. Greater empirical understanding and the emergence of new ways of understanding the Soviet experience suggest that it is time to begin the process of historicis- ing the Gulag. What then was the Gulag? The term, GULag, was a standard administrative acronym, standing for Glavnoe upravlenie ispravitel’no-trudovykh lagerei, or the Main Administrative of Corrective Labour Camps. It came into being as an institutional entity in 1930. The institution’s name changed slightly over the
1 I would like to thank the organizers and participants of the Global Convict Labour Conference for their many insightful comments, as well as Alan Barenberg, Seth Bernstein, Lilia Topouzova, Anna Hajkova, and the members of the Russian History reading group at the University of Toronto. 2 Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, trans. Thomas P. Whitney and Harry Willetts, 3 vols. (New York, 1973). 3 Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History (New York, 2003).
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004285026_015
4 For a discussion (with documents) of the birth of GULag, see S.A. Krasil’nikov, “Rozhdenie GULAGa: diskussii v verkhnikh eshelonakh vlasti: postanovleniia Politburo TsK vkp(b), 1929–1930,” Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 4 (1997). 5 Stalinskie stroiki gulaga, 1930–1953. Dokumenty (Moscow, 2005); Istoriia Stalinskogo Gulaga. Konets 1920-kh – pervaia polovina 1950-kh godov. Sobranie dokumentov v semi tomakh, 7 vols. (Moscow, 2004), vol. 1, 85–86; vol. 2, 40–42; and Gulag, 1918–1960. Dokumenty (Moscow, 2000), 9, 135–141.
6 Sistema ispravitel’no-trudovykh lagerei v sssr. Spravochnik (Moscow, 1998), 48. 7 For the impressions of one “Gulag boss,” see Deborah Kaple, ed. and trans, Gulag Boss: A Soviet Memoir (New York, 2011). 8 Arch Getty, Gabor T. Rittersporn, and Viktor N. Zemskov, “Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence,” American Historical Review, 98:4 (Oct. 1993), 1019–1020. The authors suggest that most prisoners of labour colo- nies had short sentences (under three years). The authors also note the presence of “a system of non-custodial ‘corrective work’, which included various penalties and fines… [and] consti- tuted 48 percent of all court sentences in 1935,” generally of one year and less.
9 Lynne Viola, The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin’s Special Settlements (New York, 2007); Politbiuro i krest’ianstvo: Vysylka, spetsposelenie, 1930–1940. Dokumenty, 2 vols. (Moscow, 2005–6); and V.P. Danilov and S.A. Krasil’nikov, eds., Spetspereselentsy v Zapadnoi Sibiri, 4 vols. (Novosibirsk, 1992–96). 10 Istoriia Stalinskogo Gulaga, vol. 1, 257–262; Stalinskie deportatsii, 1928–1953. Dokumenty (Moscow, 2005). The best general study of Soviet forced migrations is Pavel Polian, Against Their Will: The History and Geography of Forced Migrations in the ussr (Budapest, 2004). 11 Judith Pallot, “Forced Labour for Forestry: The Twentieth Century History of Colonization and Settlement in the North of Perm’ Oblast’,” Europe-Asia Studies, 54:6 (2002).
We will have to organize forced labour (penal servitude) at camps for colonizing underdeveloped areas that will be run with iron discipline. We have sufficient locations and space…the republic cannot be merciful to criminals and cannot waste resources on them; they must cover the costs associated with their care with their own labour.12
Self-sufficiency would be an enduring principle of the Gulag; it would also be an enduringly faulty principle. In 1928, Commissar of Justice, Nikolai Ianson, reiterated Dzerzhinskii’s ideas in a proposal to use penal labour in the great northern forests to boost the hard currency-earning timber export industry. His recommendations seemed eminently practical given the unreliability of seasonal (free) peasant labour not to mention general prison overcrowding in what had become a very costly institution to maintain. Furthermore, forced labour had already been employed in gold mining in 1927 in what was deemed a successful endeavor. Ianson made his suggestions amid a fierce, ongoing battle for control of the penal population waged among his commissariat, the Commissariat of Internal Affairs, and the ogpu (Ob’edinennoe gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie, the Unified State Political Administration or secret police). Ianson – and others – saw a new type of penal labour camp as a solution to a variety of problems, ranging from prison overcrowding and reform to colonization and economic develop- ment.13 Needless to say, this thinking was based on ideological presumptions that there were dangerous class enemies lurking within a Soviet Union, surrounded by a capitalist encirclement that inevitably would lead to war. The introduction of the First Five-Year Plan in 1928 pushed the issue of penal labour to the top of the agenda for Soviet planners. De facto ogpu chief Genrikh Iagoda spearheaded these initiatives. In April 1929, the commissariats of justice and internal affairs and the ogpu submitted a joint report calling for the creation of a network of self-supporting labour camps based on labour service rather than just isolation. The report’s authors recommended that all prisoners serving sentences of three or more years should be transferred to such camps. One month later, the Politburo endorsed most of the report’s
12 Galina Mikhailovna Ivanovna, Lamp Camp Socialism: The Gulag in the Soviet Totalitarian System, trans. Carol Flath (Armonk, ny, 2000), 186. 13 Viola, Unknown Gulag, 58–59.
Now the camps are only holding pens for prisoners whose labour we use only for today… We need to turn the camps into colonization villages with- out any expectation of a set period of imprisonment. The philanthropic stimulus of shortening sentences for good behavior is not only unsuit- able, but even harmful. It (this stimulus) gives the false impression of the “correction” of prisoners, a hypocritical kind of penance necessary to bourgeois society but not to us… We need to colonize the north in the fastest of tempos… We need to do this: we will give groups (1,500 people) of selected prisoners in various regions lumber and have them build huts where they will be able to live. Those who wish can send for their fami- lies. A commandant will manage [the settlements]. The settlements will have from 200 to 300 families. In their free time, when forestry work is complete, they, especially the weaker ones, can raise pigs, mow hay, catch fish. In the beginning, they will live on rations, later [they will live] on their own account… In the winter the entire population will go to forestry work or other work that we assign… [And] instead of the 10–15 people who guard now the thousands [of prisoners], there will be one comman- dant… We must do this now, immediately.15
Iagoda’s inspiration derived from the ongoing experience of dekulakization – the liquidation of the kulaks as a class which accompanied Soviet collectiviza- tion. In 1930 and 1931 alone, close to 2 million so-called kulaks would be subject
14 See Krasil’nikov, “Rozhdenie,” for a detailed chronology. 15 A.N. Dugin, Neizvestnyi gulag: Dokumenty i fakty (Moscow, 1999), 8–9.
16 rgaspi (Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii), f. 17, op. 120, d. 52, l. 119. 17 Danilov and Krasil’nikov, Spetspereselentsy v Zapadnoi Sibiri, vol. 3, 10. 18 Viola, Unknown Gulag, 60–61. 19 David R. Shearer, Policing Stalin’s Socialism: Repression and Social Order in the Soviet Union, 1924–1953 (New Haven, ct, 2009), 253–254. 20 V.P. Danilov. R.T. Manning, and L. Viola, eds., Tragediia Sovetskoi derevni: Kollektivizatsiia i raskulachivanie. Dokumenty i materialy. 1927–1939., 5 vols. (Moscow, 1999–2006), vol. 5, kniga 1, 328–329. Also see ibid., 337.
21 Pallot, “Forced Labour,” and Alan Barenberg, “From Prisoners to Miners: The Gulag and Its Legacy in Vorkuta,” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2007. Alan Barenberg, Gulag Town, Company Town: Forced Labor and Its Legacy in Vorkuta (New Haven and London, CT, 2014) came out while this book was in production. See also the important and highly original work of Nick Baron, Soviet Karelia: Politics, Planning, and Terror in Stalin’s Russia, 1920– 1939 (New York, 2007); idem, “Conflict and Complicity: The Expansion of the Karelian Gulag, 1923–33,” Cahiers du monde russe, 42:2–4 (2001); idem, “Production and Terror: The Operation of the Karelian Gulag, 1933–39,” Cahiers du monde russe, 43:1 (2002); and idem, “Stalinist Planning as Political Practice: Control and Repression on the Soviet Periphery, 1935–38,” Europe-Asia Studies, 56:3 (2004). 22 Istoriia Stalinskogo Gulaga, vol. 1, 50; vol. 3, 44. 23 See the essays by Oleg Khlevniuk (“The Economy of the ogpu, nkvd, and mvd of the ussr, 1930–1953: The Scale, Structure, and Trends of Development”) and others in Paul R. Gregory and Valery Lazarev, eds., The Economics of Forced Labor: The Soviet Gulag (Stanford, 2003).
24 Barenberg, “From Prisoners to Miners.” 25 Istoriia Stalinskogo Gulaga, vol. 2, 34, 44–48. 26 Judith Pallot, Laura Piacentini, and Dominique Moran, “Patriotic Discourses in Russia’s Penal Peripheries: Remembering the Mordovan Gulag,” Europe-Asia Studies, 62:1 (Jan. 2010). 27 Wilson Bell, “The Gulag and Soviet Society in Western Siberia, 1929–1953,” PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2011. 28 garf (Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii), f. 9479, op. 1, d. 89, l. 217. Doubtless, these statistics include multiple escape attempts. 29 Istoriia Stalinskogo Gulaga, vol. 4, 111. 30 For an excellent introduction to this work, see Leona Toker, Return from the Archipelago: Narratives of Gulag Survivors (Bloomington, 2000).
31 Varlam Shalmov, Kolyma Tales, trans. John Glad (New York, 1994). 32 Eugenia Semyonovna Ginzburg, Journey Into the Whirlwind, trans. Paul Stevenson and Max Hayward (New York, 1967). The sequel in English is Within the Whirlwind, trans. Ian Boland (New York, 1981). 33 See Table 7 in Getty, Rittersporn, and Zemskov, “Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years,” 1031, for the array of crimes committed by Gulag inhabitants.
34 Viola, Unknown Gulag, Chap. 5. 35 Getty, Rittersporn, and Zemskov, “Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years,” 1025, 1028. 36 Istoriia Stalinskogo Gulaga, vol. 4, 257–258, 163–164, 277–284; vol. 2, 355–358. 37 Istoriia Stalinskogo Gulaga, vol. 2, 34, 44–48.
The metropole was known for its almost aesthetic planning – detailed and impossible to fulfill. The periphery was known for its singular inability to fulfill Moscow’s plans – whether due to sheer (usually material) inability, corruption, or unwillingness. There was a massive disconnect between policy and policy implementation, inevitably at the price of prisoners’ health, safety, and lives.38 After the war, when the camps filled with pows and insurgents from the border areas, it became more difficult to govern them. A series of major revolts broke out just after the death of Stalin, which served, along with the economic problems of the Gulag, to prod the state toward reform in the post-Stalin years.39 As the Gulag’s population declined and the institution disappeared (as a bureaucracy), Moscow was forced to find other incentives, largely economic or patriotic, to maintain labour in the land of the Gulag. When the Soviet Union came to an end in 1991, some of the old Gulag towns and cities were hit hard economically, with the centre unable and increasingly unwilling to supply them.40 Only the oil boom of later years has succeeded in bringing back to life the Gulag hinterlands. Attempts to historicize the Gulag were long hindered by the politics of Cold War and the entirely legitimate emotions surrounding the tragedies of Stalin’s years in power. For Soviet scholars, the topic was simply taboo. Most western scholars followed Solzhenitsyn’s lead, attributing the Gulag to the repressive nature of the Communist regime and/or to the criminal and/or pathological nature of Stalin. There is no doubt that these factors played a key role in the dynamics of repression and the use of forced labour in Soviet development. At the same time, the post-Soviet emergence of what some are calling “Gulag studies” emphasizes the complexities and contradictions of the Gulag. Monocausal explanations of the Gulag are no longer feasible or indeed partic- ularly helpful. Archival research has deeply enriched our empirical understanding of the Gulag, leading to debates about the respective roles in the Gulag of politics,
38 For information on conditions in the special settlements, see Viola, Unknown Gulag. For conditions in subcamps, see Kaple, Gulag Boss. 39 For information on the rebellions, see Barenberg, “From Prisoners to Miners;” Steven A. Barnes, Death and Redemption: The Gulag and the Shaping of Soviet Society (Princeton, 2011), Chapter 6; idem, “In a Manner Befitting Soviet Citizens: An Uprising in the Post- Stalin Gulag,” Slavic Review, 64:4 (2005); and Andrea Graziosi, “The Great Strikes of 1953 in Soviet Labor Camps in the Accounts of their Participants: A Review,” Cahier du monde russe et sovietique, 33:4 (1992). On the economic problems of the Gulag, see Gregory and Lazarev, eds., The Economics of Forced Labor, Chap. 4. 40 See Viola, Unknown Gulag, 192–193.
41 See Oleg Khlevniuk, “The Economy of the ogpu, nkvd, and mvd of the ussr, 1930–1953,” in Gregory and Lazarev, eds., The Economy of Forced Labor, 43–66; idem., “The Economy of the Gulag,” in Paul R. Gregory, ed., Behind the Facade of Stalin’s Command Economy (Stanford, 2001), 111–130; and idem., The History of the Gulag from Collectivization to the Great Terror, trans. Vadim A. Staklo (New Haven, 2004). 42 Ivanovna, Labor Camp Socialism; Gregory, ed., Behind the Facade; idem., The Political Economy of Stalinism (Cambridge, 2004). 43 Barnes, Death and Redemption.
44 See the works cited above by Baron, Barenberg, Pallot, and Viola. 45 Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago, vol. 1, Chap. 8; Khlevniuk, History of the Gulag, 1. 46 Viola, Unknown Gulag. 47 Shearer, Policing Stalin’s Socialism; and Paul Hagenloh, Stalin’s Police: Public Order and Mass Repression in the ussr, 1926–1941 (Baltimore, 2009).
It is also clear that the Gulag developed within the fabric of Soviet history, reflecting its development at key periods of time. Policy eruptions like deku- lakization and the Great Terror manifested themselves in extreme disorganiza- tion in the Gulag. The war served as the absolute low point in the life of Gulag inhabitants, mortality rates, and sheer misery. Rebellion and reform within the Gulag were also closely tied to what was happening “on the mainland,” especially the uncertainty following Stalin’s death.48 The evolution of new ways of periodising the Gulag, then, is important to our understanding of the larger symbiotic relation between the Gulag and the evolution of the Stalinist dictatorship and economy, thus offering the begin- nings of an historicization of the Gulag. However, to truly begin to historicize the Gulag, it is necessary to explore other, macrohistorical factors at work in those times. In the 1990s, a series of young historians began the work of historicising the Soviet experience within the context of modernity studies. Their approach was comparative (European) and strongly influenced by postmodernist trends in the general historiography. In particular, the work of Zygmunt Bauman on the “gardening state” played a central role in largely theoretical rather than empiri- cal efforts to understand Soviet repression.49 Stephen Kotkin, Amir Weiner, Peter Holquist, and David Hoffman, among others, sought to contextualize Soviet policies, including repression, within a theory of “progressive moder- nity,” whereby the Soviet state sought to create an enlightenment utopia based on socialist desiderata.50 In this respect, the Soviet state acted similarly to other modern states in its use of social engineering to create a more “healthy” and homogenous society. The Gulag then served to remove from society the
48 See, e.g., Edwin Bacon, The Gulag at War: Stalin’s Forced Labour System in the Light of the Archives (New York, 1994); and Miriam Dobson, Khrushchev’s Cold Summer: Gulag Returnees, Crime, and the Fate of Reform after Stalin (Ithaca, 2009). 49 Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca, 1989). 50 Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley, 1995); idem, “Modern Times: The Soviet Union and the Interwar conjuncture,” Kritika, 2:1 (2001); Amir Weiner, ed., Landscaping the Human Garden: Twentieth-Century Population Management in a Comparative Framework (Stanford, 2003); idem, “Nature, Nurture, and Memory in a Socialist Utopia: Delineating the Soviet Socio-Ethnic Body in the Age of Socialism,” American Historical Review, 104:4 (1999); Peter Holquist, “To Count, To Extract, To Exterminate: Population Statistics and Population Politics in Late Imperial and Soviet Russia,” in Terry Martin and Ronald Grigor Suny, eds., A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin (New York, 2001); David Hoffmann, Stalinist Values: The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity, 1917–1941 (Ithaca, 2003); idem, Cultivating the Masses: Modern State Practices and Soviet Socialism, 1914–1939 (Ithaca, 2011).
51 See, e.g., Lynne Viola, “The Aesthetic of Stalinist Planning and the World of the Special Villages,” Kritika, 4:1 (2003). 52 Barnes, Death and Redemption, is a notable exception. 53 This argument is developed more fully in my essay, “Stalin’s Empire,” in Tim Snyder and Ray Brandon, ed., Stalin and Europe: Imitation and Domination, 1928–1953 (New York, 2014).
54 For a recent study, see Willard Sutherland, Taming the Wild Field: Colonization and Empire on the Russian Steppe (Ithaca, 2004). Also see Mark Bassin, Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East, 1840–1865 (Cambridge, 1999). 55 This is not to say that there were no indigenous people living in these areas; Moscow, however, generally discounted them as “backward” or “hostile” and, in the case of nomadic people and hunters, not suitable material for labour exploitation.
56 For more information, see Abby M. Schrader, “Branding the Exiles ‘Other’: Corporal Punishment and the Construction of Boundaries in mid-Nineteenth-Century Russia,” in David L. Hoffmann and Yanni Kotsonis, eds., Russian Modernity (London, 2000), 24–25; and Richard Hellie, “Migration in Early Modern Russia, 1480s–1780s,” in David Eltis, ed., Coerced and Free Migration: Global Perspectives (Stanford, 2002), 292–323. The most important work on the prerevolutionary exile and forced labour system is Andrew A. Gentes, Exile to Siberia, 1590–1822 (New York, 2008); and idem, Exile, Murder and Madness in Siberia, 1823–61 (New York, 2010). 57 Lynne Viola, V.P. Danilov, N.A. Ivnitskii, and Denis Kozlov, et al., eds., The War against the Peasantry, trans. Steven Shabad (New Haven, 2005), 98–99.
Padraic Kenney
One of the very few extant photos of the prisoners of Robben Island comes from around 1964, and shows the “high security prisoners” – Nelson Mandela and other leaders – sitting in two rows outside their section, the B section reserved for the top prisoners of the anti-apartheid opposition. They are seated in the exercise yard, breaking stones with hammers. I would like to use this photo to consider some ways of understanding the daily experi- ence of the political prisoner and the prisoner’s relationship with the incarcer- ating state. In so doing, I would like to search for some commonalities in experience, drawing upon examples from Poland and Ireland as well as South Africa in order better to understand the significance of activities taking place in the political prison cell.
Figure 14.1 B-section prisoners in Robben Island. photo credit: cloete breytenbach, uwc-robben island museum, may- ibuye archives.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004285026_016
We might say that there are two types of physical activities in which prisoners engage (aside from the physiological, like sleep): activities they endeavor to direct themselves, like writing or hungerstriking, and activities directed by the institution. Here, I am interested in the latter, leaving aside prisoners’ resistance to institutional tasks. As we will see, the element of coercion blurs the boundaries between these tasks as they are experienced by the prisoners. Let’s return to the photo. First and most obviously, these prisoners are per- forming work: repetitive physical labour that produces something, in this case crushed stone ostensibly for the island’s roads. But it is hard to see this first as labour, for we cannot help but note its cruelty, akin perhaps to torture. What does it mean to say this activity is work or torture? How might prisoners experience of it help us to situate it in their incarceration? We might start with our sense of utter alienation from the scene before us and, by acknowledging the disorientation of its participants, consider prison work and torture as similar forms of abrupt, brutal removal from reality. Torture, rather than work, provides the starting point here for, as we shall see, work was likely to be a sec- ondary experience. By the time the arrested political entered into the cell and began to learn to be a prisoner, he or she has already undergone full disorientation. John Laffin claims that politicals are usually arrested at night, the better to shock the target while also avoiding the gaze of neighbors.1 This point does not hold up well, as participants in strikes or demonstrations are as likely to be detained according to the rhythms of police suppression, and not by the arbitrary clock of security forces. Still, this idea of disorientation helps one to understand the examina- tion, interrogation, and torture of political prisoners as processes both of initiation and identification/surveillance. As they generally take place away from the cell, in ordinary offices amid everyday furnishings, they dislocate the familiar, laying groundwork for the descent into the radically unfamiliar – like torture. Not every political prisoner undergoes torture, even in the broadest sense of the term, though every political prison community contains within it the mem- ories of past torture. As Darius Rejali has shown, regimes that imprison also torture. The incarcerating state and its ideology creates certain expectations about its prisoners, and hence the necessity for torture, as also for work. How ever, torture and labour practices themselves are the product of the prisons. The police and prison staff do so without the need for guidelines – though these, of course, sometimes exist. Rejali’s masterful history of modern torture
1 John Laffin, The Anatomy of Captivity (London, 1968), 31.
2 Darius Rejali, Torture and Democracy (Princeton, 2007), 427–431. 3 See Atul Gawande, “Hellhole,” The New Yorker, March 30, 2009. 4 Tadeusz Wolsza, W cieniu Wronek, Jaworzna i Piechcina…1945–1956 (Warsaw, 2003), 32–33. 5 Denis O’Hearn, Bobby Sands: Nothing but an Unfinished Song (London, 2006).
Torture, again, differs somewhat from hazing in its goals, as it rises above the “ordinary” punishment that is part and parcel of the daily prison experience. Like hazing, torture conveys the culture of the incarcerating regime: it is supe- rior in force, holds different values from those it imprisons, and has higher- order needs that require the inflicting of pain. Unlike hazing, torture is wielded on the individual, isolated prisoner, though: hazing enforces collective degra- dation, while torture degrades and dehumanizes the individual. Nonetheless, it is essential to consider torture in the context of other punishments within prison; the fact that it generally has a more articulated goal can not lead us to justify it if we remember that it, too, is part of incarceration. The degradation is as much a part of torture as is the search for information. How do political prisoners think about torture? They tend to write very little about the experience, leaving the historian little to interpret. They report tor- ture, and help to publicize instances of it, but the memoirs usually remain silent. Jacobo Timerman, who devotes more time to this experience in his account of Argentinian prisons in the 1970s than do most, tries to offer an explanation. “In the long months of confinement – he writes – I often thought of how to transmit the pain that a tortured person undergoes. And always I concluded that it was impossible.” Timerman’s memoir is unusually blunt, but he speaks up for the silence that pervades other memoirs. Abruptly, he switches to the third person:
A man is shunted so quickly from one world to another that he’s unable to tap a reserve of energy so as to confront this unbridled violence. That is the first phase of torture: to take a man by surprise, without allowing him any reflex defense, even psychological.
Timerman notes that while some prisoners begged to be spared, and others cursed their captors, he allowed himself to be led passively to the torture room. With the same detachment, he describes the torture almost clinically, in short sentences, before interrogating himself:
What does a man feel? The only thing that comes to mind is: They’re rip- ping apart my flesh. But they didn’t rip apart my flesh. Yes, I know that now. They didn’t even leave marks… And what else? Nothing that I can think of. No other sensation? Not at that moment. But did they beat you? Yes, but it didn’t hurt.
This interrogation, Timerman argues, makes sense only among the free, for within prison torture was simply not something prisoners talked about among
6 Jacobo Timerman, Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number, trans. by Toby Talbot (Madison, wi, 1981), 32–33, 38–39. See also Henri Alleg, The Question (London, 1958). 7 Michał Seroka, questionnaire response, Archiwum Akt Nowych, Warsaw (aan) 34/III-1, k. 137; On torture in Czarist Russia, see also Gustaw Daniłowski, Wrażenia więzienne (Lwów, 1908), 131–136, as well as other questionnaire responses in aan 34/III-1. More generally, see Jonathan Daly, Autocracy under Siege: Security Police and Opposition in Russia, 1866–1905 (DeKalb, il, 1998). 8 Quoted in Regina Domańska, Pawiak – kaźń i heroizm (Warsaw, 1988), 291–292.
If they talk to me, well I’m bound to be affected by them as human beings. But the moment they adopt rough stuff, they are imprinting in my mind that they are police. And I only understand one form of dealing with police, and that’s to be as unhelpful as possible. So I button up. And I told them this: ‘It’s up to you’. We had a boxing match the first day I was arrested. Some guy tried to clout me with a club. I went into him like a bull… Now of course they were observing my reaction. And they could see that I was completely unbothered. If they beat me up, it’s to my advantage. I can use it.9
Biko was dead by the time this interview appeared in print, beaten into a coma in Port Elizabeth police station and left unattended to die. But figures like Biko become legends, their stoicism discussed in cells, their terrible treatment the subject of underground broadsheets. Most prisoners are not tortured, except in the broadest sense that all incarceration is torture by its very nature. Torture nonetheless frames political imprisonment even when it is absent, as a way of talking about the brutality of incarceration, in the same way that the prison cell is present in the imaginary of political opposition movements. In authoritarian regimes, torture remains hidden. Even when an organiza- tion like Amnesty International brings it to light, its presence in that society stays in the shadows, surfacing only in memoirs. A closer examination of two moments when the wholesale application of torture became disturbingly vis- ible may help to place torture into context as a state practice not unlike that of forced labour. The cases also remind us that torture is like work in another way, as the daily labour performed by state functionaries. In Northern Ireland during the Troubles, everyone knew that detention usu- ally entailed a beating: the masculine world of police and paramilitaries practi- cally required physical confrontation. Yet the internment campaign of August 1971 was different. In the most serious scandal during the Troubles, the Royal Union Constabulary stood accused of applying systematic torture to ira internees. In the wake of a series of bombings and armed attacks, the British
9 “Biko on Death,” The New Republic, 7 January 1978, 12.
Army swept up over 300 men across Northern Ireland on the morning of August 9. After two days, interrogators selected twelve of their captives for additional treatment. Each was woken in the middle of the night and hooded with a heavy blue cloth bag that made breathing difficult. Helicopters took them to an unknown location – some guessed Scotland – where for six days they were beaten, deprived of food and water, denied access to toilets, forced to stand in excruciating positions, and subjected to unbearable white noise. From time to time there were interrogations. As abruptly as the treatment began, it ended with transport back to prison in Belfast. These prisoners were more fortunate than their counterparts in authoritar- ian states. Within days, they had all filed statements through their lawyers, and some met with a sympathetic Member of Parliament. The British Home Secretary convened a Committee of Inquiry, which reported to Parliament in November. Two years later, the first court settlement awarded one prisoner, Patrick Shivers, 15,000 pounds in damages for imprisonment and torture. Yet to call this a scandal misses the point: this was from the beginning a public pro- cess, with only a performance of secrecy – the hoods, the helicopter journey – masking a punishment that was not far from a public spectacle. The state clearly aimed to demonstrate its power and purpose to a larger community of prisoners and to the opposition outside prison. The prisoners experienced disorienting isolation and a total loss of control. Several feared, for example, that they would be pushed from the helicopter into the sea, as was occurring at the time in Argentina – though none make this connection explicit. Kevin Hannaway was in fact pushed out of the helicopter – landing on the grass four feet below. Michael Donnelly heard voices in the helicopter saying “Throw him out.” “Before I went into the ‘copter’ – he added – I was asked if I could swim.” Francis McGuigan had evidently heard rumors: he “believed we were going to be thrown from the helicopter, as had been happen- ing to ones earlier.”10 Turning the unimaginable into routine, he struggled to make sense of an institution whose familar outlines had been transformed. Every bit of information became crucial; several prisoners mention desperate efforts to read documents handed to them after the hoods came off. At Patrick McNally’s last interrogation before returning to prison, the “big grey hard fella” questioning him gave him a sheet of paper. “He asked me to sign it. I told him I couldn’t see. I got it and tried to read it. He got annoyed. I waited until I could see, then I could make out ‘boots and socks’, so I signed it.” Others recall being
10 Fr. Denis Faul and Fr. Raymond Murray, The Hooded Men: British Torture in Ireland, August, October 1971 (Dungannon, Co. Tyrone, 1974), 24, 27. Hannaway: John McGuffin, The Guineapigs (Harmondsworth, 1974), 55–56.
They forced me to stand against the wall in the search position, balancing against the wall with fingertips. I refused to do this. Each time I rolled into a ball. They kept kicking and beating me. I took a breather against the wall – then I discovered they weren’t kicking me any more and I decided to stand against the wall and get a break… I was fully conscious of someone standing behind me all the time watching what I would do. There were occasions when I would move my hands down to get a better position, then my two arms would be lifted up against the wall to a very stretched position.
Michael Donnelly describes the position somewhat differently:
I was taken outside the room and along a corridor into another room and made stand against the wall as one is made to do for frisking, only I was made to stretch my legs and arms so far apart as I could get them. My feet also had to be as far from the wall as possible. I was made remain [sic] in this position for at least two and at most four days with the hood on. I lost all track of time, but there is no doubt that I remained in this position for days. If I did not keep my head straight I was hit with a fist on the small of the back to make me straighten up. If I did not keep my back rigid I was ‘thumped’ again in the small of the back.12
All the while they tried to determine who their torturers were and why this contest was taking place. Highly aware of the rules, to the extent that they can narrate the experience very clearly, they also know they are performing for the unseen guards. The torture of August 1971 was at one level simply part of the general mistreatment of Catholic detainees by the police and army. ira supporters
11 McNally: ibid., 59–60; also 27, 8, 11. 12 Ibid., 38, 23. Also John Conroy, Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: The Dynamics of Torture (Berkeley, 2006), Ch. 1; and McGuffin, The Guineapigs.
[Major Theunis] Swanepoel told me that whether I liked it or not I would stand on these bricks and never leave that small room before I speak, I will stand on these bricks till I speak, even if I last two weeks.
13 This is not to suggest that South African police and prison guards had not practiced tor- ture before this. Yet torture had not featured in the internment of anc and pac activists in 1960–1964; with the Terrorism Act, prison practices appear to evolved from ordinary racist cruelty into systematic torture of political detainees.
I was on the bricks from Monday, 19th May to Thursday evening, May 22nd, 1969. In that small room there was a round electric light and the heat of the light burned my skull… The pain of my feet caused by these bricks, endless questions from the police, punches, claps, insults, my moustache plucked out…all these sufferings did drive me to a point where I could not distinguish between night and day.
Another victim, Rita Ndzonga, refused to stand on the bricks.
One of the white Security police climbed on a chair and pulled me by my hair, dropped me on the bricks. I fell down and hit a gas pipe. The same man pulled me by my hair again, jerked me, and I again fell on the metal gas pipe. They threw water on my face… I managed to stand up and they said ‘On the bricks!’ I stood on the bricks and they hit me again while I was on the bricks. I fell. They again poured water on me. I was very tired. I could not stand the assault any longer. I asked to see Major Swanepoel. They said ‘Meid, jy moet praat’. (Girl, you must talk.)14
As the accused and witnesses alike recounted at the trials interminable interrogations punctuated by beatings, the state’s case collapsed amid patently flimsy evidence; the discharged prisoners, however, were promptly redetained. This trial raised in public the question of what constitutes torture, and what place it had in the investigative process. Relatives of the detained asked the judge in the case to issue a restraining order to prevent further mistreatment. The judge refused, on the grounds that further interrogations might not take place.15 The security police, in turn told of cooperative, even friendly interroga- tions. Swanepoel himself, interviewed a year after the trial, claimed interroga- tions had led to friendship with detainees:
A detainee can ask for anything he likes to eat. […] I will take him to a restaurant because, as I say, I want to win a man’s confidence and swing him away from communism… One wants the person who is questioned to become a friend. I have seen this happen time and again. People I have questioned have come back to me regularly if they have personal
14 South Africa: Trial by Torture. The Case of the 22 (London, 1970), 23, 24. See also Hilda Bernstein, South Africa: The Terrorism of Torture (London, 1972). 15 South Africa: Trial by Torture, 38–39.
problems or if they have information for me. They come and visit me at my home. Do you think this would happen if you tortured someone?16
One of the detainees, John Schlapobersky, offers an answer to Swanepoel, expos- ing the mental breakdown that torture induced. He also shows how personal an experience torture is, in this case making him dependent upon his torturers.
Swanepoel and his partner terrorised me with threats, revilement and castigation. The other two pairs entered into a ‘conspiracy of kindness’ through which I became dependent on their personal concessions and ‘small charities’. My awareness of what was happening did not enable me to control my emotional and psychological needs. As Swanepoel’s brutal- ity wore me down, I became steadily more dependent on the false con- cern of others. When they were convinced of my dependence, after three days, the ‘soft pairs’ withdrew their concern, became brutal and threatening, and switched roles with Swanepoel who, in turn, became concerned and paternalistic. At the end of four days I felt disorientated. The distinction between sleep and waking life was dissolved. I walked into walls whilst asleep on my feet, and whilst awake on the chair found reality imbued with maca- bre dreams from semi-consciousness. I felt an inclination to trust Swanepoel as a ‘father figure’ and this threw me into confusion as to what was real about me. I saw myself as a ‘sinner’ and believed I had commit- ted some hidden crime which we, the police and I, were now hunting down – for my own sake.
After Schlapobersky was examined by a doctor at the request of the British Embassy, and cleared, Swanepoel took revenge:
I was put on my feet again and kept falling asleep on my feer and walking into the wall, waking when I banged against it. I could not see clearly. I could not focus my eyes… I think my identity was so detroyed I would have done almost anything asked of me.
And indeed, Schlapobersky soon signed a statement prepared by the Security Police.17
16 Bernstein, South Africa: The Terrorism of Torture, 35. 17 Bernstein, South Africa: The Terrorism of Torture, 40–41.
While prisoners began to doubt their own innocence, observers, including even judges, doubted whether interrogation, even a lengthy session, could be considered torture in and of itself. Why should time, or the elaborate edifice of paternal role-playing, make the experience torture? Rejali details the physical and psychological effects of forced satanding, placing it clearly in the torture category.18 Hilda Bernstein, an anti-apartheid activist who fled in 1964, makes the case for torture eloquently:
There is no means which can be used to classify degrees of torture, nor is there any standard of endurance to inflicted pain or mental suffering. The public demands that if a political prisoner claims he has been tortured, then he must have some horrible physical details to recount. “Were you tortured?” – the reporter asks the released prisoner. And it is not enough for him to reply “Solitary confinement is torture,” or “I suf- fered terrible mental torture.” The press wants something more solid: electric shocks, lashes, the rack.
Bernstein concludes with a statement that gets at the heart of the experience: “Uncertainty itself is torture.”19 Torture is a capacious term, then, and we are best off defining it as Bernstein does, or as a prisoner might: continuous directed, intentional coercive mea- sures linked in some way to the extraction of information or the modification of attitude. Torture also establishes and reinforces a dependent relationship of the prisoner to the interrogator/captor, whether that person works for the police or the prison. This dependent relationship is based upon fear and disori- entation. These are the mental states that the tortured prisoner brings into the rest of the prison experience. Let me return to the photo. As I noted earlier, this is self-evidently a picture of labour, too. One cannot easily separate the ordinary humiliations, degrada- tions, and discomforts of prison from the basic punishment that is the prison itself, an alien institution to which the political is remanded and to which he or she surrenders freedom. All these terms – punishment, degradation, etc. – lead us inexorably to the question of the purpose of imprisonment. To imprison is to punish, but that is not the same thing as saying that punish- ment, as opposed to rehabilitation, behavioral modification, or quarantine,
18 Rejali, Torture and Democracy, 316–333, esp. 316; on standing in South Africa, see 16–17, for which Rejali cites the report of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. 19 South Africa: Trial by Torture, 31. While Bernstein’s name does not appear in the book, similarities to the 1972 idaf pamphlet cited elsewhere point to her authorship.
20 Steven A. Barnes, Death and Redemption: The Gulag and the Shaping of Soviet Society (Princeton, 2011), 36–37. 21 Literature on the genealogy of concentration camps is poorly developed. A starting point is Iain Smith and Andreas Stucki, “The Colonial Development of Concentration Camps (1868–1902),” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 39:3 (2011), 417–437. On the role of military needs, see Jonathan Hyslop, “The Invention of the Concentration Camp: Cuba, Southern Africa, and the Philippines, 1896–1907,” South African Historical Journal 63:2 (2011), 251–276.
22 Neville Alexander, Robben Island Dossier, 1964–1974 (Cape Town, 1994), 31. 23 Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, My Years in English Jails (Dublin, 1967), 111. 24 Seán McConville, Irish Political Prisoners, 1848–1922: Theatres of War (London, 2005), 173.
25 Walter Sisulu, I Will Go Singing (Cape Town, 2002), 160. 26 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York, 1995). 27 Budzyński, “‘Pawiak’ jako więzienie polityczne w latach 1880–1915,” PhD diss., U. of Warsaw, 1987, 182–183.
her muscles ached with lactic acid, and the best thing to do would be to let her organism rest for a while. She stretched out on the floor and, amaz- ingly, was left alone until she got up and returned to the interrogation herself.28
Ciechanowicz normalized torture – which was the work of her tormentors – by equating it with exercise, and applying the rules of the latter to the former. Exercise on Robben Island, in the form of organized sports, eventually sup- planted work in prisoners’ minds and lives. But as the sports program devel- oped in the early 1970s, prison officials used work on Saturdays to punish workers scheduled to compete in a match. Thus in August 1972, Head of Prison Lieutenant van de Westhuizen informed prisoners that some would have “to go and crush stones as a punishment for not having performed sufficient work during the working week.” “He has the power – reported a prisoner delegation after meeting with him – of making the whole prison work on Saturdays. This system of punishment has been sanctioned ‘at a higher level’ and he is not concerned if we do not play on Saturdays or for the next 10 years.”29 Aside from the punishment itself, it is notable that van de Westhuizen either refers specifi- cally to a “working week” or the prisoners interpret his comments this way. Comparing work and exercise, and in this case exercise organized not by a guard watching men march around an exercise yard but by the prisoners them- selves, the Lieutenant sought to reassert the primacy of work. The prisoners, in turn, seem to have responded by refusing to play their matches on Saturday. This strike, which we know about only indirectly, further blurs the line between the two activities. This tactic seems to have worked, as within a few years, the
28 Leszek Prorok, Smutne pół rycerzy żywych (Warsaw, 1989), 56–57. 29 Joint Rugby/Soccer Report 35–72, 24 August 1972. Mayibuye Archives, Cape Town, mch 64, Box 36, folder 1.
We have demanded creative work. They say they are unable to. So we just go to the quarry & do nothing. We are not on strike, only bored &
30 Executive Committee minutes, undated logbook entry (late December 1976), mch 64, Box 19, folder 1.2. 31 Barbara Szwarczyk-Janicka, Za kratami. Wspomnienie więzniarki okresu stalinowskiego (Lublin, 1992), 29. 32 Alexander, Robben Island Dossier, 34.
frustrated with this type of work. They of course don’t like our not work- ing. But there is a stalemate. I don’t know how long this farce will last.33
Kathrada’s letter reminds us that prison labour, for political prisoners in par- ticular, was not a given. I suggest that politicals encounter three fundamental experiences of labour, differentiated by the sensitivities authorities felt toward prisoners. Dominant in this chapter is labour that is degrading, or at least phys- ically taxing; this may differentiate the political from the criminal, but politi- cals might also be given, intentionally, the same work as ordinary prisoners. Along side this is a second experience, in which politicals are singled out to perform intellectual work, as librarians, office clerks, etc. This is not particu- larly common, as there are not a lot of such jobs to go around. But in the last third of the twentieth century, it becomes increasingly common for politicals not to work at all. Most likely, this is the result of prison authorities either deciding that it is too much hassle to force recalcitrant politicals to work (as on Robben Island), or yielding to pressure from newly-vigorous national and international organizations like Amnesty International. Today, images like the photograph acompanying this essay are much less likely. What place, then, did work have in the life of the political prisoner? Few prisoners are as eloquent on the experience of prison labour as is Nelson Mandela, whose positive attitude must have grated on his fellow inmates. When Mandela and others first arrived on Robben Island in 1962, they demanded to be called to work like other prisoners; they hoped in this way to make contact with less famous politicals among the criminal prisoners. The regime’s sadistic response was the knap line, where Mandela echoed Ignacy Hanczak’s feelings: “warders from other sections and even other prisons came to stare at us as if we were a collection of rare caged animals.”34 The move to the lime quarry, though it ushers in an era referred to in his memoirs as “The Dark Years,” “invigorated” him and (so he claims) his comrades:
I much preferred being outside in nature, being able to see grass and trees, to observe birds flitting overhead, to feel the wind blowing in from the sea. It felt good to use all one’s muscles, with the sun at one’s back, and there was simple gratification in building up mounds of stone and lime.
The contrast between these memoirs and Alexander’s report at the time is instructive, but Mandela insists that the march to the quarry, the smell of
33 Ahmed Kathrada, Memoirs (Cape Town, 2004), 238. 34 Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 18; quote on 79–80.
35 Ibid., 107. 36 Ibid., 196–197. 37 Natoo Babenia, Memoirs of a Saboteur: Reflections on my Political Activity in India and South Africa (Bellville, South Africa, 1995), 153–154.
Heather Ann Thompson
Penitentiaries, prison farms, and other institutions of incarceration have long been places of production as well as punishment. Notably, however, this fact has only tended to register in the public consciousness at specific moments in American history when workers in the “free world” were facing serious under- or unemployment, while employers, meanwhile, were making record profits because they had turned, quite legally, to prisoners to make their goods. When employment was particularly scarce for the American working class right after the Civil War as well as during the Great Depression, for example, discussions regarding what prison labour might have to do with the hardships faced by workers on the outside eventually were plentiful and they led, by the New Deal, to significant federal restrictions on private companies ability to profit off of the incarcerated. However, such barriers to the private sector’s use of prison labour were short lived. In the 1970s business interests themselves began to mobilize to regain access to inmate workers and, by the close of the 20th century, they had succeeded in reopening penal facilities to myriad employers who sought to maximize profit margins as well as increase their control over the productive process. In this essay I suggest that it is time once again for the American work- ing class to pay attention to penal facilities as sites of productive labour and wage competition and to recognize that its destiny is tied in subtle but impor- tant ways to the ability of inmates as well as prison guards to demand fair pay as well as safe working conditions as well. Similarly, it is time for scholars to probe this historical relationship more carefully. To an extent that few have yet appreciated, America’s inmate population and its many prison guards have a very rich labour history and this “hidden” labour history is important, not only because it broadens our understanding of what constitutes the American working class and working class struggle over the 19th and 20th centuries, but
1 This chapter reproduces, with minor changes, the article published under the same title in the journal Labor. Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 8.3, 2001, 15–45. Permission for reprinting has been granted by Duke University Press.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004285026_017
The Incarcerated Working Class and the Free World Working Class: 1865–1945
A number of historians have already done invaluable work on prison labour – particularly as it existed in both the South and the North in the wake of the Civil War.2 Indeed these rich studies make it clear that after 1865 inmates were forced to labour under some of the harshest conditions faced by any group of American workers – toiling in mines, on railroad lines, in cotton fields, in tur- pentine forests, as well as in dank prison factories. In some cases local and state authorities leased prisoners out to private companies who in turn took them to remote locations to be exploited for profit. In others, private enterprises brought their business into the prison itself so that they could take advantage of the captive workforce already there. In still other cases, those convicted of crimes were placed on chain gangs and in plantation fields, or locked into prison workshops, by state governments eager to make money while they meted out punishment. That forced labour was a most profitable form of punishment in the post- bellum period is indisputable. In the wake of the Civil war southern whites were determined to maintain their racial and political dominance, as well as their unlimited access to black labour. These goals very quickly led to pass new laws specifically intended to criminalize the newly freed African American community which, in turn, led to the imprisonment of record numbers of black men and women that could be used as a de facto slave labour force in the
2 Edward L. Ayers, Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment in the 19th-Century American South (Oxford, 1984); Mary Ellen Curtin, Black Prisoners and Their World, Alabama, 1865–1900 (Charlottesville, 2000); Alex Lichtenstein, Twice the Work of Free Labor: the Political Economy of Convict Labor in the New South (New York, 1996); David M. Oshinsky, Worse Than Slavery: “Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice” (New York, 1997); Rebecca McLennan, The Crisis of Imprisonment: Protest, Politics, and the Making of the American Penal State, 1776– 1941 (Cambridge, 2008); Douglas Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (New York, 2008); Talitha LaFlouria, “Convict Women and Their Quest for Humanity: Examining Patterns of Race, Class, and Gender in Georgia’s Convict Lease and Chain Gang Systems, 1865–1917” (PhD Dissertation, Howard University, 2009).
3 Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name, 127. 4 “Revelations of a Hell-Hole: Flogging by the Wholesale” The National Police Gazette, October 26, 1867. 5 Ibid. 6 “The Murdered Convict: Brutality of Prison Keepers Strong Testimony against the Warden and His Assistants,” New York Times, September 5, 1875. 7 David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness. Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London, 2007); Grace Hale, Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890–1940 (New York, 1988). For more on the debates surrounding “whiteness” as an explana- tory concept see Eric Arneson, “Up From Exclusion: Black and White Workers, Race, and the State of Labor History,” Reviews in American History, 26.1 (1998), 146–174; Peter Kolchin, “Whiteness Studies: The New History of Race in America,” The Journal of American History, 89.1 (2002), 154–173.
“the prison manufacturer gets his factory building as a rule, rent free and tax free; he often gets heat, light, and power free; he gets labor power, if he is a contractor, for an average of fifty cents a day; while if the state engage[s] in manufacture it gets this labor for nothing,” which, in turn, led “workingmen” to “claim that the competition of penal labor exerts a depressing influence upon their wages and their standard of living.”8
As free world workers increasingly saw prison labour as a scourge on their own livelihoods, they mounted various efforts to regulate, if not eliminate altogether, private employers’ ability to utilize the incarcerated as forced labourers. In states that depended heavily on an industrial workforce for their economic health spokesmen for labour could find politicians sympathetic to their argument that unfettered business access to prison labour posed a very real problem of unfair competition. In Michigan, for example, labour movement pressure led the governor to advocate doing “away with the leasing or private contract system” as long as the state was still allowed to work prison- ers to recoup the costs of their confinement.9 Other such states, however, were determined to allow private firms to utilize their prisoners for profit and rebuffed organized labours’ criticism of this practice.
there were four separate firms engaged in the manufacturing business as follows: The Columbus Bolt Works, manufacturing bolts and nuts. The E.B. Lanman Co. manufacturing washers, stamps and nuts. The P. Hayden Saddlery Hardware Co., manufacturing harness hardware. The Baldwin Fording and Tool Co. manufacturing agricultural implements.10
Undaunted, labour groups continued, throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, to express their concerns about prison labour by regularly issuing
8 “The Importance of the Prison Labor Problem,” 5–6. Report submitted to the International Prison Congress. 1910. The National Committee on Prison Labor. New York City. Pamphlet #5001. Box 6. Kheel Center Archives. Cornell Univeristy. Ithaca, NY. 9 Message of Governor Fred M. Warner to the Forty-Fifth Legislature of Michigan Relative to the Employment of Convict Labor. March 17, 1909. Pamphlets. Box 6. Kheel Center Archives. Cornell University. Ithaca, NY. 10 “Special Report on Prison Labor by the State Bureau of Labor Statistics, Ohio,” 1910, 8–9. Pamphlets. Box 6. Kheel Center Archives. Cornell University. Ithaca, NY.
the labor organizations of this city and state are about to commence a crusade against the system of convict labor. The Granite Cutters, Marble Cutters, and Marble Polishers Unions have decided to take decisive action and will send a delegation to Harrisburg during the next session to peti- tion the Legislature against the further employment of convict labor in the manufacture of any goods not required by the prison.11
Officials could not help but notice such concerted opposition to prison labour. As one New Jersey official put it, “the agitation of the subject of convict competition with free labor” was ever on the increase and, although he felt that “such competition was more imaginary than real,” he conceded that such labour activism was at time very effective. As he noted, “Legislature after legis- lature was beset by the opponents of mechanical labor in the prison, and in 1881 a law was passed [in his state] prohibiting the employment of more than 100 men in any one branch of industry.”12 When pressuring state politicians did not net sufficient reform in a given state, workers both North and South were not above withholding their own labour, hoping that their strikes against companies that used prison labour would call needed attention to the prison labour “problem.”13 With the economic collapse of the Great Depression, however, came the realization that even the most determined labour movement efforts to
11 “Against Convict Labor: Pennsylvania Workingmen to Appeal to the Legislature,” New York Times. December 27, 1890. 12 Remarks of A.S. Meyrick, 44. In John S. Perry, ed. “Prison Labor: With Tables Showing the Proportion of Convict to Citizen Labor in the Prisons of the State of New York, and of the United States” (1885). Historical reprint. 13 Kate Richardson O’Hare, “Prison labor for private profit: Survey and report on the prison labor situation : submitted to the Joint Committee on Prison Labor of the Union-Made Garment…and the United Garment Workers of America,” (Joint Committee on Prison Labor, 1925). The most famous strike may well be that of coalminers in the state of Tennessee. See: Karin Shapiro, A New South Rebellion: The Battle Against Convict Labor in the Tennessee Coalfields, 1871–1896 (Chapel Hill, 1998). For some examples of labor’s efforts to call attention to the unfair competition posed by unfettered access to prison labor see: “The Competition of Free Labor,” New York Times. October 1, 1879; Report Industrial Commission on Prison Labor Prepared in Conformity with Act of Congress Approved June 18, 1898. Volume III of the Commission’s Reports. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1900.
Undoubtedly the directors of Sing Sing prison are to be congratulated for their business acumen for being able to make a profit of $258,593 on products manufactured by the inmates of that institution. But this does not present such a pretty picture when one realizes that business totally approximately $3,500,000 has been diverted from legitimate enterprise solely in need of this trade, and more than 800 law abiding citizens are being deprived of a livelihood.14
Shocking figures such as these in the 1920s and 1930s led free world workers to call on the federal government to regulate private access to prison labour. Eventually such unremitting agitation led to some substantial federal legisla- tion relating to prison labour and, for the first time ever, private employers faced meaningful barriers to utilising inmates when they sought to drive down labour costs. First, the Hawes–Cooper Act of 1929 ensured that all prison-made goods transported into another state would be governed by the laws of the state receiving those goods. This was important since it meant that states with a well-organized working class were, for all intents and purposes, off limits to any company seeking to sell prison made, mined, and tapped products.15 Second, the Walsh–Healy Act of 1936 prohibited even state governments from utilising prisoner labour if the contract they had secured with a penal facility exceeded $10,000.16 And finally, the Ashurst–Sumners Act of 1940 made it a federal offense to transport prison-made goods within a state for private use which made it wholly unfeasible for private employers to use prison labour.17 By World War Two it appeared, at least the overwhelmingly white labour move- ment in America that the prison labour problem had been solved. Although new federal regulation had indeed insulted workers in the free world from prison labour’s competitive threat, prison labour itself had not been abolished and, to citizens who found themselves locked behind iron bars in the penal institutions of the North or held captive on the prison farms of the South – still and overwhelmingly citizens of color – exploitation and abuse
14 David Siller, “Prison-Labor Competition,” New York Times, January 30, 1933. 15 Hawes-Cooper Act, 1929, c. 79, 1, 2, 45 Stat. 1084, title 49 U.S.C. 60 (49 U.S.C.A. 60). 16 Walsh-Healey Public Contracts Act, as amended (41 U.S.C. 35–45). 17 Ashurst-Sumner Act, 1935, Public Law 215, 74th Congress.
18 The idea that prison labour ceased to be a problem in America after World War Second is a central tenet of Douglas Blackmon’s award-winning study of convict leasing. 19 “Plan a New Factory for Alcatraz Prison: Federal Officials Also Will Extend Plants for Convict Labor to Other Centers,” New York Times. June 14, 1936. 20 “Factories with Fences: 75 Years of Changing Lives,” History of Federal Prison Industries.
Struggling Against Exploitation: America’s Inmates, 1945–1980
Prisoner networks, however, remained deeply concerned with how corrections officials treated them – particularly fearing and loathing the abuses they endured labouring on state-run plantations and factories. What is more, like other American workers, these inmates routinely resisted the exploitation of their labour and their largely hidden struggles are a crucial element of this nation’s working class history. From the early 19th century, when prisoner- weavers “concerted effort of sabotage and mutual protection” led them to be “committed to the ringbolt” (a heinous torture device particularly favored by prison administrators when dealing with rebellious inmates), to the early 21st century when inmates still risked severe retribution to file suit against prison systems for forcing them to work when it was not safe, America’s inmates have fought hard to be treated humanely while incarcerated, which fundamentally included the right to labour under safe and non-abusive conditions.24
22 Ibid. 23 “Plan a New Factory for Alcatraz Prison: Federal Officials Also Will Extend Plants for Convict Labor to Other Centers,” New York Times, June 14, 1936. 24 Larry Goldsmith, “‘To Profit by His Skill and to Traffic in His Crime:’ Prison Labor in the Early 19th-Century Massachusetts,” Labor History, 40. 4 (1999), 448; Squire Servance,
After the Second World War in particular, prisoner labour protests began rocking penal facilities across the nation. In the year 1947 alone over five hun- dred inmates at the Danbury Federal Reformatory in Connecticut conducted a work stoppage; sixty-nine Wisconsin prisoners held an eight hour sit-down strike in Waupun prison, and inmates at Auburn prison in upstate New York also remained “in their cells instead of going to work.”25 On March 23, 1949 over six hundred prisoners in Cleveland, Ohio “went on a sit-down strike” and demanded that the warden talk with the “complaint committee” that they had formed to “settle their grievances.”26 On August 18, 1950 over five hundred and seventy prisoners at the Great Meadows prison in Comstock New York organized a ten-hour sit-down strike.27 In 1951 prisoners in both Angola, Louisiana and at the State Rock Quarry in Buford, Georgia engaged in mass mutilations, slitting their heel tendons, so that they could no longer work the endless hours forced upon them.28 In 1953 over one hundred and twenty inmates launched in four day sit down strike in protest of the long hours they were forced to labour in the sugar cane fields of Louisiana.29 In 1959 three hundred inmates at New Jersey State Penn stopped working and demanded higher wages in that prison’s license plate shop when they were forced to meet a massive rise in plate production.30 Throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s prison strikes continued to erupt regularly and, to the alarm of corrections officials, the labour protests of the incarcerated had grown even more militant. On September 2, 1960, one hundred and two inmates at the Minnesota State Prison held a 15 h overnight sit-down strike on that facilities ball diamond and, by 1968, over eight hundred
“Jones V. Bock: New Clarity under the Prison Litigation Reform Act.”
31 “Fixed bayonets back ultimatum to rebellions Minnesota convicts,” Los Angeles Times. September 4, 1960; “Virginia Prison Strike Ends,” New York Times, July 19, 1968. 32 Testimony of William Jackson. April 12, 1972, 82. McKay Transcript. 33 Testimony of David Addison. April 17, 1972, 93. McKay transcript. 34 Ibid. 35 “Bargaining in Correctional Institutions: Restructuring The Relation between the Inmate and the Prison Authority.” The Yale Law Journal, 81.4 (1972), 726–757; Alan Bailey, “Prisoners’ Unions.” Unpublished Paper. August 6, 1973. Antioch Law School. In North Carolina Prisoner Rights Union Collection. Special Collections, Atkins Library. UNC Charlotte. Charlotte, North Carolina. 36 “A Convicts’ Union: 14,000,” The Observer, March 5, 1933. 37 Heather McCarty, “From Con-Boss to Gang Lord: The Transformation of Social Relations in California Prisons, 1943–1983.” (PhD Dissertation. University of California, Berkeley, 2004). 38 Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (New York, 2003), 515; Bailey, “Prisoners Unions,” 2.
Ultimately state officials crushed the strike at Folsom, but this did not stop California inmates from forming a labour organization. Calling their group the United Prisoners Union (upu), and choosing as their organising slogan “Power to the Convicted Class,” prisoners from this state not only began agitating throughout the California system, but also set about trying to contact the incarcerated in other penal institutions around the country so that the upu could be a national organization.39 To aid in this endeavor, the upu incorpo- rated as a non-profit association and set about publishing its own newspaper to send out called “Outlaw.”40 According to scholar Susan Blankenship, the upu ultimately succeeded in spreading to “several different state prison systems and its membership levels approached 23,000 including both men and women.”41 Organizers determination to win the minimum wage and workmen’s compensation benefits for all inmates who, at least in California, were currently earning between $.02 and $.16 an hour, struck a responsive chord in penal facilities as far away as New York. The fact that this union was led by African American prisoners equally interested in fighting the racism that flourished in the nation’s criminal justice and prison system was also deeply attractive to the scores of black prisoners around the country who were singled out for the worst prison jobs and the most vicious treatment from prison officials. Indeed over 1800 such prisoners at the Green Haven correc- tional facility in that state were so inspired by the upu and all it stood for that they “signed authorization cards for union membership.”42 The upu was only one of several prisoner labour unions formed in this period. One of the nation’s most successful inmate labour organizations, the National Prisoners’ Reform Association (npra), came together on March 29, 1972 at the Adult Correctional Institution in Cranston, Rhode Island. Not only did the npra manage to secure an office in the prison, but it also landed an telephone line to the outside on which it could reach out to inmates in other
39 Everett R. Holless, “Convicts Seek to Form a National Union.” New York Times. September 26, 1971. For a critical view on the formation of prisoner unions in the California prison system see Chapter Eight: “Prisoner Unions and the ‘Imprisoned Class.’” In: Eric Cummins, The Rise and Fall of California’s Radical Prison Movement (Stanford, 1994). 40 Holless, “Convicts Seek.” 41 Susan Blankenship, “Revisiting the Democratic Possibilities of Prisoners’ Labor Unions,” Studies in Law, Politics and Society: Crime & Punishment, Perspectives from the Humanities, December 2005. 42 Bailey, Unpublished paper, 5. Blankenship, “Revisiting.” David Rudovsky, The Rights of Prisoners: The Basic ACLU Guide to a Prisoner’s Rights (An American Civil Liberties Union Handbook) (New York, 1977).
43 Bailey, “Prisoners Unions,” 5. 44 Jamie Bissonette, When the Prisoners Ran Walpole (Southend Press, 2008), 97. 45 Ibid, 134. 46 Ibid, 11. 47 Bailey, “Prisoners Unions,” 6–7. 48 For more on the North Carolina Prisoners Union see: Series 1: North Carolina Prisoners’ Labor Union (1972–1977). In the T.J. Reddy Papers, 1967–1985. Manuscript Collection, 79. Special Collections. Atkins Library. University of North Carolina at Charlotte.; Donald F. Tibbs, From Black Power to Prison Power: The Making of Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners’ Labor Union (Basingstoke, 2011). 49 Clair Cripe, Legal Aspects of Corrections Management (Jones and Bartlett, 2004), p. 157.
Struggling Against Exploitation: America’s Guards, 1865–1980
Just as the labour history of inmates is largely unknown to scholars, particu- larly as it unfolded outside of the South and into the 20th century, so too is the labour history of prison guards. Although prison guards clearly were members of the American working class, rarely have historians studied them as such.53
50 Ibid, 157. 51 Bailey, “Prisoners Unions,” 8–11. 52 Loic Wacquant, Prisons of Poverty (Minneapolis, 2009), 135. 53 There is much historical as well as contemporary debate regarding whether employees charged with maintaining production in, and control of, the workplace are members of the working class. Within the auto industry, for example, foremen tried to unionize as workers but they were eventually prevented from doing so by law. The position of prison guards has been more legally ambiguous in no small part because those they control are themselves not considered part of the working class. This essay suggests that, unlike auto plant fore- men, prison guards are not part of management and indeed their interests are time and again diametrically opposed to those of prison managers. Thus they are, this essay main- tains, part of the American working class. This is the position that by organized labor ulti- mately took as well. By 1946, for example, the Rochester, New York AFL Organizing Committee had explicitly committed itself to organising prison guards. See: “Welcome to Rochester Labor Council History: 1855–2005,”
As with policemen, the nature of correction officers’ work seems to have ren- dered their on-the-job concerns less sympathetic to scholars. In fact, since 1865 Americans who have taken jobs as prison guards have done so quite reluctantly and did so largely because they possessed few job skills and heralded from areas of the country with few attractive employment opportunities. This dependence on prison employment rendered guards a segment of the working class whom state employers could pay little and work hard. Turn-of-the-century guard salaries were in fact so low that public officials remarked on their pay as part and parcel of a “prison labor problem” in 1910. According to one survey of corrections wages, “guards and keepers average from $800 to $900 a year.”54 In the wake of both wwi and wwii guard salaries were still abysmally low and they had gained far few benefits than had other workers in the public sector. Correction officers were also acutely aware that they made far less than factory workers were earning in cities such as Detroit.55 Not only were people not “beating down the doors to get jobs as guards because of the low pay,” but the schedules state departments of correction expected guards to work were also hard on families. As this New Jersey guard explained, “all starting guards went on the night shift and worked six-days a week.”56 Being underpaid and overworked bothered prison guards around the coun- try, but of far greater concern to them was prison managements’ practice of placing them in potentially life-threatening situations simply because they refused to hire more personnel for the round-the-clock monitoring of inmates they insisted upon. Indeed, throughout the 19th and 20th centuries to labour as a keeper in a prison meant dealing with extremely high job stress – a degree of anxiety that made it much harder for guards to do their jobs both effectively and humanely. When corrections officer John Stockholm came to work at the Attica State Correctional Facility he was one of the youngest guards in the facility and yet management immediately placed him in charge of approxi- mately 60–70 inmates at one time. “Sometimes – he pointed – we would take
Federationist, Volume 28. American Federation of Labor, p. 214; Nelson Lichtenstein, “Auto Worker Militancy and the Structure of Factory Life, 1937–1955,” The Journal of American History, 67.2 (1980), 335–353; Richard S. Halpern, “Employee Unionization and Foremen’s Attitudes,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 6.1 (1961), 73–88; Paul Kivel, You Call this Democracy: Who Benefits, Who Pays, and Who Really Decides (Lanham, 2006). 54 “The Importance of the Prison Labor Problem,” 4. Report submitted to the International Prison Congress. 1910. The National Committee on Prison Labor. New York City. Pamphlet #5001. Box 6. Kheel Center Archives. Cornell University. Ithaca, NY. 55 Harry Camisa and Jim Franklin, Inside Out: Fifty Years Behind the Walls of New Jersey’s Trenton State Prison (Hamburg, PA, 2008), 6. 56 Ibid, 6.
57 Testimony of John Stockholm. Public Hearing Conducted by Governor George E. Pataki’s Attica Task Force. May 9 and 10, 2002. Rochester, NY 6. 58 Testimony of Cochrane, 36. McKay transcript; Michael McLaughlin, Russell S. Dynda, and Warren Jamison, Screw: The Truth about Walpole State Prison by the Guard Who Lived It (New Horizon Press, 1989), 65. 59 McLaughlin, Dynda, and Jamison, Screw, 65. 60 Ibid, 64–65. 61 Ibid, 64–65. 62 Ibid, 65. 63 Ibid, 64; Ted Conover, Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, 20.
“frustration, discontent, and collective protest.”64 In 1953 even though guards at Sing Sing were prevented by the Condon–Wadlin Law from striking, they nevertheless affiliated with the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (afscme) believing that this labour representation would help them fight their “deplorable, even primitive, job conditions.”65 In 1954 Indiana State Penitentiary guards walked off the job, demanding the right to unionize. When prison management retaliated by suspending forty-six guards for ten days the rest of corrections workforce boycotted the prison the next morning at 8 a.m.66 The decade of the 1960s was even more tumultuous. In 1965 New York’s prison guards were still barred from striking, so officers from fourteen state prisons took their “free time” at work to protest pay scales, a lack of Collective Bargaining, and the Condon–Wadlin law.67 In 1968 so many correction officers at both Trenton and Rahway prison called in sick to protest low wages and lack of benefits in New Jersey that Mercer County Judge A. Jerome Moore felted compelled to sign “a permanent injunction…barring walk outs by guards…”68 The guard labour mobilizations of the 1970s were even more militant still. In that decade Ohio’s guards courted the Teamsters, afscme, and also state civil service organizations such as the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association to represent their needs on the job while states such as New York continued to be rocked by numerous, and oftentimes illegal, guard labour protests.69 In August, 1970, for example, twenty-seven hundred members of guard organi- zations such as the Corrections Officers Benevolence Association picketed city hall over serious personnel shortages and overwork at Manhattan’s city jail known as the Tombs and only one month later guards initiated a major “sick call” at the penal facility on Rikers Island.70 By 1971 guards at Ohio’s main state
64 Lynn Zimmer and James Jacobs, “Challenging the Taylor Law: Prison Guards on Strike,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 34.4 (July 1981), 532. 65 “Guards at Sing Sing Join Union That Bars Strikes,” New York Times, April 29, 1953. 66 “Prison Guards Strike,” New York Times, October 7, 1954. 67 Council 82, Security and Law Enforcement Employees, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Records, 1968–1989 M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections & Archives University Libraries/University at Albany/ State University of New York 1400 Washington Avenue/Albany, New York; Lynn Zimmer and James B. Jacobs, “Challenging the Taylor Law: Prison Guards on Strike,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Jul., 1981), 531–544. 68 “Jersey Writ Bars Strikes By State Prison Guards,” New York Times, August 25, 1968. 69 Paul D. Staudohar, “Prison Guard Labor Relations in Ohio,” Industrial Relations, 15.2, 177–190. 70 Michael T. Kaufman. “Sick-Out at Rikers; City Prisons to Get 300 More Officers.” New York Times, September 3, 1970.
The Strengths of Labour Agitation Behind Prison Walls: Inmates and Guards, 1865–1980
Without question prison guard activism netted tangible gains – particularly during the 1970s. When guards across New York State decided to ignore the legal mandate preventing public sector workers from engaging in work stop- pages and initiated their sixteen day system-wide strike in 1979, for example, they ultimately secured better working conditions.73 Not only did correction officers around the country take action in ways that prevented various states’ departments of corrections from ignoring their workplace concerns – from walking off the job, to engaging in “sick outs,” to filing complaints with local and state officials – but they were also able to file grievances, negotiate better contracts, and keep prison management in check at the level of committee meetings thanks to large labour unions such as afscme.74 As a result of being
71 “Ohio Prison Guards Strike,” New York Times, January 26, 1971; “Strike in Ohio Spreads to a 7th Prison: Some on Duty Guard Foils Jailbreak.” New York Times, July 15, 1974. 72 Lawrence Fellows. New York Times. “Guards at 10 Prisons Out in Connecticut: Strikers Defy a Restraining Order of Court State Police Help Keep 3200 Inmates Orderly.” New York Times, April 5, 1977; Lynn Zimmer and James Jacobs. “Challenging the Taylor Law: Prison Guards on Strike,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 34.4 (July 1981), 537. 73 Council 82, Security and Law Enforcement Employees, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Records, 1968–1989 M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections & Archives University Libraries/University at Albany/ State University of New York 1400 Washington Avenue/Albany, New York; Lynn Zimmer and James B. Jacobs, “Challenging the Taylor Law: Prison Guards on Strike,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Jul., 1981), 531–544. 74 See Series 2: Subject Files, 1968–1987, Boxes 2–3; Series 3: Legal Files, Box 1 and 4. Council 82, Security and Law Enforcement Employees, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Records, 1968–1989 M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections & Archives University Libraries/University at Albany/State University of New York 1400 Washington Avenue/Albany, New York.
75 Testimony of David Addison. 94. McKay transcript. 76 See The New York State Special Commission on Attica. Attica: The Official Report of the New York State Special Commission on Attica (New York, 1972). 77 Bissonette. 78 Federal Court-Western District of New York. Stephen Merkle, at all, v. Vincent R. Mancusi, Superintendent of Attica Correctional Facility. C1970–490. Archives. Attica State Correctional Facility.
The Decline of the Labour Movement Behind Prison Walls
Even though federal and state corrections officials still wielded enormous power over both inmates and guards, the postwar upsurge in prison labour activism had greatly unnerved them. As one labour scholar has pointed out about the rise of inmate labour protests, “By demonstrating the ability to organize and alter institutional practices – however slight this may have been compared to the power of prison administrators – prisoners’ unions presented a challenge to the control of prison administration.”79 Importantly, even though prisoner labour actions rarely netted a specific gain, this labour unrest accompanied, and was part and parcel of, a broader prisoner rights movement fight to humanize penal institutions in general and to end justice-system racism very specifically.80 While prison officials strongly disliked dealing with prisoner protests over wages and working conditions, they were infuriated by the rulings in critical inmate-initiated court cases ranging from Cooper v Pate in 1964, that guaranteed black Muslim inmates access to the Koran, to Ruiz v. Estelle in 1980 that censured an entire state correctional system for its abuse of inmates and violations of their civil rights.81 In response to the escalation of inmate activism of the 1960s and early 1970s writ large, prison officials had begun expending enormous energy on trying to regain complete command of their facilities. They attempted to ban meetings of inmates within prisons. They tried to forbid the sending or receiving of union related materials through the prison mail system. They also singled out specific prisoner labour leaders for time in segregation. The biggest thorn in their side was, however, inmate claims on the right to unionize. If inmates could join a union, then they would have rights. If they had rights, then prison officials would no longer have carte blanche to extract prisoners’ labour as they saw fit while incarcerating them. Ultimately, prison officials in North Carolina fought inmates on this very issue in the courts in a case called Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners
79 Blankenship, “Revisiting.” 80 For more on the vital connections between prisoner labor activism and prison takeovers see Heather Ann Thompson’s forthcoming study of the Attica Uprising of 1971 with Pantheon Books. For more on the ways in which inmates’ working and living conditions generated protested that later resulted in monumental legal victories for inmates in general see: Robert Chase, “Civil Rights on the Cellblock: Race, Reform, and Violence in Texas Prisons and the Nation, 1945–1990,” (PhD Dissertation, Maryland, 2009). 81 Cooper v Pate, 378 U.S. 546 (1964); Ruiz v Estelle, 503 F. Supp. 1265 (S.D. Tex. 1980). For more on the Ruiz case see Chase, “Civil Rights on the Cell Block,” particularly Chapters 7 and 8.
Union (1977).82 After what was clearly a landmark victory in this case, state governments across the nation were given the legal support they needed to ban prisoners from soliciting other prisoners to join a union, to prevent them from holding union meetings in prisons, and to stop them from sending or receiving bulk mailings relating to union activity. In essence when this court settled the question of whether prisoners had the same First Amendment pro- tections enjoyed by other citizens, ruling that they did not, the prisoners’ labour movement in America suffered a major setback as federal and state offi- cials alike were given a green light to run prison workplaces as they saw fit. Simultaneous to prison officials across the country seeking legal backing to prevent the growth of the new prisoner labour movement that they saw organising in their penal facilities, conservative politicians had been working with private business to beat back much of the regulatory apparatus that had been erected by postwar liberals by levying enormous pressure on Congress throughout the 1970s to pass laws more favorable to privatization in virtually every segment of American civic and economic life. From education to social services to health care to corrections free-market boosters argued that excessive governmental regulation was hindering their ability to make money. Business’s desire to privatize the public sector dovetailed in interesting ways with prison officials’ desire to prevent prisoners from having a say in the productive process. The combination of conservative lobbying efforts and prison systems’ wish to have complete control over its incarcerated labour force led, in 1979 to a complete overhaul of the most significant regulations on the use of inmate labour that had been in force since the New Deal.83 That year Congress passed the Justice System Improvement Act of 1979 which, among other things, created something called the Private Sector/Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program (pie), which created a special niche and incentive for private companies to partner with prisons to get their goods man- ufactured and their services provided.84 Together, this act in general, and this program in particular, revolutionized the rules governing prison labour. Notably, just as the Justice System Improvement Act became law the nation itself was entering its second major incarceration boom – one as dependent upon criminalising spaces of color as had been the original imprisonment explosion of the late-19th century. This was not insignificant since, by the close
82 Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners’ Labor Union, Inc., 433 U.S. 119 (1977). 83 The Justice System Improvement Act of 1979 as well as the Federal Acquisition Stream lining Act revolutionized the rules governing prison labour. 84 Public Law 96–157 (codified at 18 U.S.C. 1761(c) and 41 U.S.C. 35).
85 Alan Beck and Jennifer C. Karberg, “Prisoner and Jail Inmates at midyear 2000,” Bureau of Justice Report, 3, 2001.
Expanding Prison Labour: the Federal Correctional System
Right before the Justice Improvement Assistance Act became law, and in clear anticipation of its passage, the Federal Prison Industries board created by Roosevelt back in 1934 underwent a major transformation. In 1977 fpi branded itself with the trade name “unicor.” To publicize that it was in the business of producing goods at great prices it also adopted a new corporate logo as well as called upon its new Corporate Marketing Office “to develop a nationwide mar- keting strategy.”88 By the 1990s unicor had completely overhauled its textile line, making it a major new textile manufacturer in the United States, and also had “enhanced its metal and wood furniture lines and its electronic product lines” while simultaneously developing
new lines in stainless steel products, thermoplastics, printed circuits, modular furniture, ergonomic chairs, Kevlar-reinforced products (such as military helmets), and optics, and it introduced state-of-the-art produc- tion techniques (including the use of modern printing equipment for the automated production of Government forms).89
87 Council 82, Security and Law Enforcement Employees, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Records, 1968–1989 M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections & Archives University Libraries/University At Albany/ State University Of New York 1400 Washington Avenue/Albany, New York; Lynn Zimmer and James B. Jacobs, “Challenging the Taylor Law: Prison Guards on Strike,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 34.4 (July, 1981), 531–544. 88 “Factories without Fences,” 28. 89 Ibid, 30. Also see: History UNICOR: “Marketing the Product and Selling the Program: UNICOR Since 1980,” in Factories With Fences, 1996, 28.
By the dawn of the 21st century federal prisons had come to rival the nation’s largest private corporations in terms of the sheer number of products it was manufacturing and services it was offering; prisoner labour was the foundation upon which this productive empire had been built. Ultimately unicor could boast everything from a “Clothing and Textiles Business Group” that provided uniforms for members of law enforcement, hospitals, and the military as well as sold “custom-made draperies and curtains” to an “Industrial Products Business Group” that, among other things, manufactured “dorm and quarters furnishings” as well as “optical eyewear: Safety and Prescription.”90 Other lucrative divisions included a “Services Business Group” that provided inmates for “distribution and order fulfillment” as well as “assembly, packing and services,” “call center and help desk support,” “printing and creative design services,” and “laundry services.”91 Whereas sales of federal prison goods totaled only $29 million in 1960 by 2002 its sales were $678.7 million.92
Expanding Prison Labour: the State Correctional System
Following fpi’s lead, state prisons across the country also adopted new corpo- rate logos and aggressive plans for marketing their prison-made products. Indeed the industrial wings of almost every major state correctional system began modeling themselves on private factories both in terms of setting pro- duction quota goals and implementing quality control measures. New Jersey Department of Corrections’ factory division, deptcor, decided to market its products with the catchy slogan “And you thought we only made license plates,” while Kentucky Correctional Industries sold its prison-made products as “Kentucky’s Best Kept Secret.”93 This state’s prisoner workers made literally thousands of products for local and state institutions including
Hardwood office suites, metal office systems, bedding, janitorial supplies, signage, embroidery and silkscreen, furniture, refurbishing/reupholster, custom wood, metal storage units, office seating, modular office systems, institutional clothing, institutional furniture.94
90 UNICOR Products and Services.
Out west the California Prison Industry Authority, a “$153-million-a-year con- glomerate,” was, by 2000, holding “a virtual monopoly on supplies to state offices ranging from furniture to bumper stickers…a vast industrial operation that markets a line of 1,800 products.”95 The pay that inmates received working for state prison industries varied greatly, but most pay rates hovered around 20c an hour for their labour.96 In addition to revamping their pre-existing prison factories already selling goods to the public sector, over time an increasing number of state correc- tional facilities enticed private employers to move their own full-scale manu- facturing and service enterprises into penal facilities and run these new factories with prison labour, or, to keep their original enterprises but outsource certain tasks to prisoners on a contract basis. Such private company access to prison labour was only allowable under specific contracts approved by the pie program. This program mandated, among other things, that inmates who laboured for a private enterprise were to be paid at least the Federal Minimum Wage while the state, in turn, was allowed to turn around and deduct taxes, room and board, contributions to a victims’ compensation program, and fam- ily support from those wages. From the states’ perspective, these arrangements were golden and the good news for them was that “all States, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and all units of local government authorized by law to administer prison industry programs are eligible to apply for [pie] program certification.”97 For the private companies, the benefits were equally clear. As one report published by the National Institute of Justice explained:
Some positive features of these collaborations [between private industry and prisons] include: A cost-competitive, motivated workforce… Financial incentives, including low-cost industrial spaces and equipment purchase subsidy, that are offered by corrections officials… Safe work environment due to the presence of security personnel and a metal detector that keeps weapons out the shop area.98
95 Mark Gladstone, “California and the West: The Debate over Jobs in Prison,” Los Angeles Times, April 3, 2000. 96 Chang, T. and Thompkins, D. “Corporations go to prison: the expansion of corporate power in the correctional industry,” Labor Studies Journal, 27(1). 97 Bureau of Justice Assistance Fact Sheet. Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program. BJA. November, 1995.
The New Era of Prison Privatization
Not only did the 1979 revolution in prison-related legislation fundamentally alter the way in which federal and state prisons operated and, as importantly, intersected with for-profit businesses, but it also paved the way for prisons themselves to be privatized and operated as for-profit entities. As states began to feel the financial pinch of the incarceration boom of the 1980s contracting with private companies both to build new prisons and to manage its facilities became increasingly attractive. One of the first major private companies to get into the prison building and management business was Corrections Corporation of America Incorporated (cca). The cca was only founded in 1983 but very quickly eventually became the sixth largest corrections system in the nation, behind only the federal government and four states. cca was also one of the first to create labour partnerships between private prisons and private manufacturers via pie. As cca described it, the company developed “work programs that offer offend- ers meaningful work and employment opportunities that enhance existing skills and teach new ones that are especially marketable in today’s workplace.”99 Between 1996 and 1997 alone “cca’s revenues increased by 58 percent, from $293 million to $462 million. Its net profit grew from $30.9 million to $53.9 million.”100 Indeed this private corporation was, by that year, already “managing more than 50 percent of all beds under contract with such provid- ers in the United States.”101 One of cca’s closest competitors, Wackenhut Corrections Corporation (wcc), became the nation’s second-largest for-profit prison operator in 1984 and, by the close of 2002 it “had received 59 awards/contracts representing 69 correctional/detention facilities in the United States” and other countries.102 By no means, however, were wcc and cca the only private companies profit- ing from incarceration and prison labour in the later 20th century. The first private prison complex actually dated “back to 1975 when rca (now General
99 CCA White Paper: Corrections Corporation of America on Pre-Release and Reentry Services.
Electric) established the Intensive Treatment Unit, a 20-bed, high security, dor- mitory style training school for delinquents at Weaversville, Pennsylvania.”103 Still other private-sector companies decided, rather than to run prisons, to instead partner with various governmental interests to build them. One of the largest prison building joint ventures in the private sector, in this case leading to building of a “$40 million medium-security prison in Colorado,” took place “between American Correctional Systems, Inc. (design and management), the huge Bechtel Group, Inc. (construction), South Korea’s Daewoo International Corporation (finance), and the international finance company Shearson Lehman Brothers, Inc. (underwriting).”104 By the 1990s a host of investment houses were in the business of financing the private prison boom at both the state and federal level. Firms such as Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and Lehman Brothers were underwriting “between two and three billion dollars in prison construction bonds” every year of the 1990s.105
The Return of Prison Labour and the Fate of the American Working Class
Together, new legislation such as the Justice Improvement Act, new federal programs such as pie, and state and federal corrections systems’ new desire to privatize their prisons, had created a new era of forced labour for America’s inmates. Its fundamental elements, however, eerily echoed the previous exploitative and brutal era of prison labour that had flourished in American from 1865 through the New Deal. In one pie program run out of San Diego’s Richard J. Donovan State Correctional Facility outside San Diego prisoner- workers who were told to “sew T-shirts for Mecca, Seattle Cotton Works, Lee Jeans, No Fear, Trinidad Tees, and other U.S. companies” felt that the California Department of Corrections was “operating a sweatshop behind bars.” Not only were these inmates forced to work in cramped quarters that harkened back to those suffered by textile workers in the 19th century, but these prisoners reported that they were often not paid what they were owed and, worse, that
103 Dr Charles Van Eaton, “Current Private Sector Involvement in the Corrections System,” April 1, 1989. Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
106 Julie Light, “Look for That Prison Label – Inmate Work Programs Raise Human Rights Concerns,” The Progressive, June, 2000. 107 Bruce Geiselman, “Working Conditions to Improve for Alabama Prisoners,” Waste News, January 21, 2002. 108 “Prisoners Exposed to Toxic Dust at UNICOR Recycling Factories,” Prison Legal News; Anne- Marie Cusac, Toxic Prison Labor. The Progressive (February 2009) Volume 73, Number 3; Elizabeth Grossman, Toxic Recycling . The Nation, November, 21, 2005.
As you know, we are short almost 15 percent in the amount of staff working in our nation’s prisons. Budgets always seem to be tight. While other law enforcement agencies such as the fbi, Border Patrol, Ice and others have grown, funding for the Bureau of Prison’s has stayed relatively flat in the amount of staff to handle the increasing numbers of inmates.112
Interestingly, guards employed by private prisons seem to fare worse than those employed by the public sector. According the studies done by the National Council on Crime as well as figures posted in Corrections Yearbook, “the average turnover rate for correctional officers in for-profit prisons was 41.2 percent, compared to 14.9 percent in publicly run prisons,” in part because “for-profit prisons have lower staffing, lower salaries, and higher rates of
109 McLaughlin, Dynda, and Jamison, Screw, 88. 110 Ibid, 35, 77. 111 Ibid, 78. 112 Union Opening Speech during Testimony before House Appropriations Subcommittee – CJSS on March 10, 2009,
113 Camille Camp and George Camp, The Corrections Yearbook, 1998. (Middleton, Ct: Criminal Justice Institute Inc. 1998, pgs. 150, 401); “The Record: For Profit Prisons Threaten Public Safety.” AFSCME.
all the furniture (including desks and chairs) in our public higher educa- tion system (uw, wsu, tesc, etc.), the signs at Safeco field (Microjet, Monroe), United Airlines reservations (Monroe), Levis Jeans (Clallam), Starbucks packaging (Monroe), Nintendo packaging (Monroe), Sees Candies, Western Optical Eyeglasses, Mortgage Lending, Duffle Bags, Josten’s caps & gowns, Chairs (Compuchair, Monroe), [and] Bob Barker shoes (Monroe).121
Service sector businesses also gravitated to prisoner workers instead of workers on the outside. Trans World Airlines, for example, decided to move its reserva- tions centre into the California Youth Authority’s Ventura Training School for youthful offenders after it saw how successfully Best Western hotels utilized prisoner workers in the Arizona Correctional Facility for Women in Phoenix.122 In the Midwest and Northeast partnerships between state departments of corrections and private companies resulted in job losses for workers on the
118 Sexton, 10. 119 Sexton, 10. 120 Nicholas Stein, “Business Behind Bars,” Fortune, 9/15/2003, 148.5, 161–166; H. Miller, “Inmates Build New Lives from the Floor up: Anderson Hardwood Floors’ Partnership with a South Carolina Prison Gives Prisoners a Chance to Gain Woodworking,” Wood & Wood Products, 108.7 (2003), 65–71. 121 “Criminal Justice Reform.” Jobs with Justice. Washington State.
123 “Prison Labor, Prison Blues” AFL-CIO Label Letter, December 16, 1995.
From the Labour History of Inmates and Guards to the Future of the American Working Class
Although the labour history of inmates, guards, and the American working class in general was clearly quite grim once a prison labour economy again became an important feature of the American economy writ large, there is some evidence to suggest that the seeds are already being sown for a new era of resistance to this inherently exploitative labour system. From inmates’ renewed efforts to be heard as prisoner-workers, to public sector unions’ renewed commitment to serving guard needs, to organized labour’s increasing recognition that it too has a stake in addressing the prison labour problem, to community activists’ efforts to bring greater attention to what goes on behind prison walls, it is clear that prison labour is once again on the national radar screen. Although they have not yet succeeded, it is important to point out that inmates are once again trying to form inmate unions in states ranging from Ohio to Texas to Missouri. Inmates in the state of Missouri have formed an organization called the Missouri Prison Labor Union which, although it is not a formally recognized bargaining agent for inmates, nevertheless had attracted five hundred members by the year 2000. One of this group’s most central demands remains that inmates be paid the federal minimum wage for the labour they perform while incarcerated.130 Similarly, prisoners in Texas have
128 Pat Beall and Chad Terhune, “Job Program at Prison Draws Fire,” Wall Street Journal. January 15, 1997. 129 Kim Nash, “Prison: Employment Opportunities of the Future,” Computerworld.
provide Inmate Laborers with a social and political forum from which to promote principles of social justice in a manner consistent with unions rights…[and to] negotiate collective bargaining for improved working and living conditions, wages, and rehabilitative programs.131
Prisoner labourers are also engaging in collective work stoppages once again and, at times, they have even found some support from activists on the outside. When prisoners working for the state of Minnesota Department of Corrections’ industrial division, MinnCor, went on strike in the 1990s, for example, they “were supported by the A Job Is a Right Campaign, which also passed a resolu- tion supporting prisoners’ unions.”132 Guards have also been trying to change the course of their labour history. Although frustration with the lukewarm support they tended to receive from public sector unions in the 1980s led many guards to abandon the labour movement and misguidedly join correctional officer associations that tended to support “tough on crime” conservatives to protect their own jobs, other guards have remained with public sector unions and have redoubled their own efforts to hold on to decent wages, solid pensions, and safe but humane working conditions.133 When guards who worked for the private prison chain cca found themselves forced to work off the clock, for example, they immedi- ately initiated a class action law suit that eventually netted them a $30,000 settlement.134
131 Lt. Col. Ricky L. Long, founder. “The Texas Prisoners Labor Union,”
Public sector unions such as afscme and the seiu have noticed that prison guards are newly determined to improve their working conditions and these organizations, in turn, have begun to expend new energy on supporting such efforts. In 1993 afscme formed afscme Corrections United (acu), a new unit specifically committed “to representing 60,000 corrections officers and 23,000 corrections employees in their fight for rights on the job and in the political sphere.”135 As the acu explains, its mission is to join “forces in a labor union to fight for better pay and benefits, for safe workplaces, and to uphold the stan- dard of professionalism in our field” which meant, among other things, lobby- ing for federal legislation which would force “all states to create a mechanism to allow public safety officers, including corrections staff, to unionize and bar- gain collectively.”136 afscme has also begun working hard to bring state legis- latures’ attention to the fact that “low pay and fear are driving guards to quite, leaving fewer guards, and causing more fear and more walk-offs in an increas- ingly dangerous cycle.” In states such as Texas they have fought to “get a raise for the guards” who in 2000 still only earned a yearly salary of $26,727.137 Correction officers have noticed these efforts. One correction officer from Waupun prison in Wisconsin was particularly grateful to afscme for giving guards “the neces- sary resources and manpower to aggressively fight privatization.”138 The seiu has also stepped up efforts to represent correction officers. seiu worked hard to get The Wackenhut Corporation to recognize it as the “exclu- sive” collective bargaining representative for corrections personnel in that company and, when Wackenhut “decline[d] to enter into such an agreement,” the seiu refused to back down. Prison employee members of seiu Local 1000 have come to see the union is their protection against department of correc- tions’ officials making their jobs harder and more dangerous. As Tom Colpitts, a Supervising Cook at a California youth facility put it, “Everything is a fight. We have to fight our own managers just to be able to do the work we’re supposed to do.”139 A nurse at another youth facility, Sean Gruell, con- curred. “Administrators force us to do duties outside of our job classification and in some cases our safety is compromised.”140 California Department of
135 AFSCME Corrections United.
Corrections teacher Virginia McGregor joined the seiu because, as she explained, “We can’t express our opinions or disagree with administrators without fear of retaliation. They act like they own us.”141 Over time seiu Local 1000 has come to represent more than 11,000 workers in nine separate bargain- ing units.142 The American Federation of Government Employees (afge) also became a newly powerful labour organization for prison guards – in this case those who worked for the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The afge became “the largest federal employee union, representing 600,000 workers in the federal govern- ment and the government of the District of Columbia” and the afge Council of Prison Locals 33 came to represent correction officers specifically. This union became particularly concerned about how much forced overtime Bureau of Prisons correction officers endured and took this up as a major issue with prison management. As one afge article explained:
In no other profession is there such a high turnover rate requiring so much forced or mandatory overtime on its personnel. It was not uncom- mon for the entire third shift officers to be mandated to stay for the entire first shift 5 days a week making for an 80 hour work week. 40 plus hours of overtime a pay period was the normal not the unusual and after a while you began to hate telephone calls after 4:00 in the morning… Many correctional professionals will attest that sleep deprivation from shift work may lead to occurrences that jeopardize not only themselves, but also other officers and inmates… Shift working correctional officers affected by sleep deprivation experience a greater incidence of diarrhea, constipation, ulcers, and heartburn. As if this were not enough, their risk of cardiovascular disease is increased by to 50 percent… So administra- tors you now have to calculate more than the financial cost of forced or mandatory overtime at your facilities.143
Not only have public sector unions stepped up their efforts to represent prison employees so that they can better withstand exploitation from departments of correction, but at least some segments of the American labour movement have come to see their own stake in regulating prison labour and have begun to mobilize against both prison labour and prison privatization. Washington
141 Ibid. 142 Ibid. 143 Tracy E. Barnhardt, “Mandatory Overtime = Sleep Deprivation,” Corrections.com, January 11, 2010, www.corrections.com/articles/23187-mandatory-overtime-sleep-deprivation.
State’s Jobs with Justice began a major criminal justice reform campaign in the mid-2000s, for example, that focused particular energy on the problem of prison labour for the American working class. As this organization noted
Fifteen private companies are currently operating within the state prison system and using inmate labor… Our state legislature has set ever higher annual benchmarks of recruiting corporations to use prison labor [but] taxpayers subsidize the companies in the program, which aren’t required to pay for inmates’ housing, living costs, health insurance, or retirement. Company costs for electricity and water are also covered by the state.144
This, they argue, “unfairly takes jobs from the free world working class.”145 In November 2001, Jobs with Justice “helped to sponsor and organize a regional summit conference to begin building a coalition” that brought together “over 250 committed activists attending, 50 endorsing and sponsoring organizations, and 30 presentations on a wide variety of criminal justice issues.”146 At that summit the Seattle Construction Building Trades Council participated in trying to find “apprenticeships as alternatives to incarceration,” the American Federation of Teachers (aft) Local 1789 and the Coalition of Labor Union Women (cluw) also offered their summit, as did the King County Labor Council (kclc), the Out Front Labor Coalition, the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (apala), and seiu Local 6.147 Nationally, the afl-cio has also begun to speak out against the competitive threat of prison labour, as has the Coalition of Black Trade Unions (cbtu).148 Community activists have also been increasingly active in the fight against exploitive prison labour and privatization. In 2003, for example, an activist organization called Critical Resistance held a conference of over 1500 people in New Orleans. At this gathering at a local elementary school,
“proposals for how to collectively resist this nation’s reliance on prisons, policing, and forms of surveillance – were explored and debated through
144 Washington State. Jobs with Justice. “Criminal Justice Reform,”
over 100 workshops, caucuses, performances, films, exhibitions, and informal discussions.”149
That same year community activists, including environmentalists, protested prison labour outside of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas because Dell was using prisoners to recycle their computers and those inmates suffered terrible working conditions in the course of that labour. As these protesters pointed out, these jobs could have been going to workers on the outside but Dell would have to provide them a safer workplace.150 College campuses have also become new sites of anti-prison labour activism. On March 13, 2000 representatives of Not With Our Money!, a coalition of stu- dents opposed to prison profiteering, met with officials from Sodexho Marriott Services to announce that this company would have to stop investing in private prison companies such as cca or students would prevent it from doing busi- ness with universities where it makes more than $1 billion in annual revenues.151 Backing up their claim, students initiated anti-Sodexho campaigns on 50 U.S. and Canadian campuses that contract with Sodexho Marriott Services such as the State University of New York at Albany, Evergreen State College (wa), Goucher College and James Madison University. They also bombarded national publications such as The Observer (London), The Nation, Mother Jones, The Village Voice, Dissent, “as well as dozens of stories in local and campus papers” with their message that investing in prisons would be costly for any company that also made money in institutions of higher learning.
Rethinking Working Class Struggle Through the Lens of the Carceral State
Beating back the horrific prison labour practices of the post-1865 United States had depended on this very sort of inmate, guard, labour movement, and com- munity activism and such concerted agitation will be necessary to beat it back
149 Rachel Herzing and Melissa Burch, “Challenging the Prison Industrial Complex,” USA Today Magazine. November 2003. 150 “Protest Slams Dell’s Use of Prison Labor,” CNN.com. January 10, 2003. 151 Response To Sodexho Alliance Chairman Pierre Bellon From Not With Our Money!
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Ackerghem 128 Arizona 429–430 Africa IX, X, Xn4, XV, XXII, 10n15, 11n17, 13, 14, Arzila 147 17n31, 18, 18n34, 22, 24n46, 30n60, 32, Asia X, Xn4, Xn6, 10n15, 11, 11n17, 12n21, 17n31, 32n63, 42n86, 42n87, 43n89, 45n93, 20n38, 21, 23, 25n48, 28n56, 42n86, 53n17, 76n133, 106, 106n68, 129n14, 42n87, 43n87, 53n17, 62n59, 72n109, 144–148, 150–156, 158, 162, 165–167, 169, 147–148, 152, 169, 175n21, 199n3, 200n4, 172, 173, 173n14, 174, 175, 200n4, 202n15, 201, 202n15, 209n45, 213n60, 217, 250n5, 249–272, 249n2, 250n5, 250n6, 250n8, 250n8, 314, 330, 364n11, 367, 368n21, 251n9, 251n10, 251n11, 253n15, 253n16, 369n26, 398 253n17, 253n18, 253n19, 253n20, 254n22, Assam 204, 206, 207, 207n32, 207n33, 254n24, 254n25, 256n35, 257n42, 261n65, 207n34 261n66, 262n69, 268n105, 269n114, 314, Atlantic Ocean 15 330, 331, 331n61, 339, 380, 388, 389n14, Attica 409, 413–414, 414n57, 417, 417n76, 389n15, 390n16, 390n17, 391n18, 391n19, 417n78, 418n80 392n21, 398n37 Auburn 16, 16n30, 152, 296, 315, 319, 323, 408, Alabama 18n34, 401n2, 426, 426n107 408n25 Albany 39n80, 415n67, 416n73, 416n74, Auschwitz 24n44, 341, 341n20, 342, 421n87, 436 342n20, 342n21, 343, 344, 344n26, Alexandria 63 349, 357 Algarve 148 Australia IX, XV, 5n6, 20n38, 21, 39n78, Alipore 213n59, 213n61, 214, 215 41n84, 69n92, 125, 130n17, 153, 164, 166, Almadén 12n21, 13 168–170, 173n14, 174, 175n23, 176, 178–181, Americas X, Xn4, XI, X, XVI, 6n7, 11n17, 14, 15, 181n39, 182, 184n53, 187, 190, 194, 194n63, 15n27, 16n29, 17n31, 18, 40n80, 41n84, 195, 196, 224, 290, 308 42n84, 44n92, 114, 114n9, 114n10, 124, Austria 115, 134n27, 338, 377 124n19, 149, 164n23, 169, 170n1, 171, 171n5, Azores 13 177, 178n29, 182n44, 202n15, 250n8, 266, 273–309, 273n1, 274n2, 274n3, 276n4, Bahia 147, 149 314, 314n4, 316, 330, 330n57, 330n58, 331, Balkans 139, 139n43, 140 400n1, 400n7, 402n7, 404n13, 405, Balleto 298 406n18, 419, 424, 424n99, 428 Baltimore 58n37, 133n23, 171, 374n47 Amsterdam VII, XV, 1n1, 11n17, 24n45, 28n53, Barbados 169, 170, 170n2 38n76, 43n91, 49n1, 108, 113–118, 120, 121, Batavia (Jakarta) 14 318n13 Bavaria 95n37, 96n37, 115, 338 Anatolia 30n60, 139, 139n44, 140, 141 Beijing 26, 26n50 Andaman Islands 20n38, 21, 169, 175n21, 195, Belfast 42n86, 386 200n6 Belgium 261 Angola 20n38, 22, 129n13, 144, 147–149, Belomor 362 152–153, 154n17, 156, 157, 158n19, 159, 160, Bencoolen 169, 174 162–167, 172n12, 408, 430 Bengal 17n31, 21, 174, 201, 201n10, 202n11, Angola (Louisiana) 408, 408n28, 430 202n12, 202n13, 203–205, 205n24, Antwerp 113 208n36, 210n48, 211n52, 212, 213, 213n61, Argentina 18n34, 41n84, 42n86, 273n2, 274, 214, 216, 217n79, 217n81 274n2, 282–290, 306–308, 330, 386 Benguela 157 Arica 282 Bergen-Belsen 347, 348n38
Berlin 23n43, 28n53, 35n69, 58n39, 83n9, Catalonia 88n18, 90, 104 85n13, 126n3, 128n7, 128n10, 132n22, Cayenne 126–143, 138n40, 222n3, 223, 224n10, 138n39, 156, 335n6, 336n8, 336n9, 338, 226, 228, 233, 234, 242, 244 342n23, 346n33, 356n60 Celle 113, 118 Bermuda 20n38, 169, 195 Ceuta 13, 129n13, 147, 150, 166, 172 Birkenau 343 Ceylon 21, 130n18 Bissau 147 Charvein 228 Bithynia 62, 67, 71n103 Chile 41n84, 274–283, 276n4, 277n6, 280n18, Bohemia 131, 134 281n19, 291, 294, 306, 307, 330, 330n57, Bombay 21, 204n21, 206n27, 206n29, 208n36, 331 219n89 Chillicothe 407 Botany Bay 20n38, 168, 173n15, 174n17, 174n18, China 15n26, 23, 26, 26n50, 30, 30n60, 31n61, 175n23, 177, 256 52n13, 105, 313n3, 331, 431 Bouches du Rhône (department) 237 Cilicia 69 Brazil 11, 13, 18, 18n34, 22, 129n13, 129n16, Civitavecchia 321n24, 324 147–151, 158, 167, 274, 291–296, 296n51, 307 Cleveland 408, 408n26 Bremen 113, 115–117 Colorado 16n29, 425 Brest 20n38, 122, 224 Comstock (Great Meadows prison) 408, British Isles 176, 193–195 408n27 Brussels 28n56, 118, 128n10, 134 Congo 18, 18n34, 262n69 Buchenwald 335, 339, 347 Connecticut 408, 416, 416n72, 430 Buenos Aires 41n84, 42n86, 164n23, 273n2, Constantinople 140 274n2, 274n3, 283, 283n20, 285–288, 290, Copenhagen 89n21, 113 330n57 Copiapó 282 Buford 408 Corinth 51n11 Burma 21, 23, 23n42, 199n1, 266 Crakow 340 Cranston 410 Cacheu 147, 150 Crimea 140 Cadiz 13, 14 Croatia 128, 128n8, 134, 137n34 Cairo 18, 53n17, 72n110, 75n127, 75n128, Cuba 14, 274, 392n21 75n129, 140 Cyprus 31, 139n44 Calcutta 17, 201, 202n11, 203n16, 205n25, 205n26, 207n33, 207n34, 208n36, 209, Dachau 334–337, 337n11, 339 211n52, 213n61, 214, 215n72, 217n83, Danbury 408, 408n25 219n88 Danube River 132, 134 California 27n51, 40n82, 44n92, 296, 409, Danzig 115 409n37, 410, 410n39, 423, 423n95, 425, Das Voltas 174 429, 432n133, 433 Delaware 412 Canada 21, 129n16, 182n44 Delft 115, 116, 120 Cape Horn 276n4 Delhi 17n31, 20n38, 23n42, 42n86, 199n1, Cape of Good Hope 14, 130n18, 182n44 200n6, 201, 201n8, 201n9, 202n14, Cape Town VIIn2, XIV, 140n47, 176, 179, 194n65, 206n28, 209n45, 216n76, 218n87, 219n91 251n9, 393n22, 394n25, 395n29, 397n33 Devil’s Island 226 Cape Verde 13, 22, 147, 148, 155 Diocletian’s Baths (prison) 319, 323–325, 328 Caribbean 10n15, 53n17, 124, 169, 170, 175, 177, Diu 147–150 181, 181n40, 200n4, 250n5, 351 Cartagena (New Carthagena) 13, 71 Egypt 10, 12, 18n34, 19n35, 31, 58n39, 63, Castro Marim 13, 13n21, 13n22, 147–150, 64n67, 69, 74n123, 75, 76n133, 78, 140n47 148n5, 156, 166 El Ferrol 13
Elmore 426 Gross-Rosen (concentration camp) 341 El Reno 407 Guadalajara 296 England 14, 15, 83n9, 89n21, 92, 94, 94n34, Guadeloupe 238 95, 105n66, 110, 113, 114n10, 120, 121, 123, Guantanamo Bay 362 124, 124n20, 130, 130n17, 177, 180n36, 213, Guiana 21, 22, 164, 164n23, 166, 234 251, 260, 313, 314n4, 330, 330n59, 377 Guinea 22 Escobedo 296 Gusen 339 Europe VIII, IX, XIII, XVI, 10n16, 12n21, 15n26, 16, 17n31, 24n46, 25, 25n48, 28, Haarlem 115, 118, 121 28n56, 33n66, 34, 35n69, 43, 79, 80n4, The Hague 28n56, 44n92, 116 81, 82, 91n25, 103n57, 106, 108–125, 110n4, Hamburg 23n43, 115, 118, 120, 122, 139n44, 132, 152, 154, 167, 217, 313, 314n6, 316, 318, 335n4, 336n7, 339, 356n60, 413n55 318n13, 319, 325, 328, 330, 331, 339–341, Havana 14 348, 353, 364n11, 368n21, 369n26, Hobart 176n24, 179n34, 179n35, 181, 181n39, 376n53, 377 184, 185n54, 194n64 Honduras 173, 175, 184, 426 Fernando de Noronha 274, 285, 289, Hungary 128, 134 291–296, 291n42, 299, 307, 308 Florence 100n47 India X, Xn5, 12n21, 14, 14n24, 17n31, 18, 21, 22, Florida 426 41n84, 42n86, 60n49, 149, 155, 174, 175, Flossenbürg 338, 339, 357 175n21, 175n22, 176, 176n25, 179, 199–221, Folsom 409, 410 199n1, 201n7, 201n8, 201n9, 202n13, France 11n17, 19, 19n35, 20n38, 20n39, 22, 202n14, 202n15, 203n19, 204n21, 204n22, 24n45, 34, 34n69, 36n73, 45n93, 112, 205, 206n28, 206n29, 209n42, 209n45, 112n5, 120–125, 129, 129n14, 129n16, 210n49, 212n54, 213n60, 215n71, 215n72, 130n17, 164n23, 222, 222n2, 222n4, 224, 216n76, 217n80, 217n81, 217n83, 218n87, 235, 238, 243, 245–248, 261, 262n69, 313, 219n88, 398n37, 431 314n6, 330, 330n57, 377 Indiana 415 French Guiana XI, 20n38, 125, 164, 164n23, Indian Ocean X, Xn6, 5, 5n6, 14, 20n38, 166, 222–248 20n40, 38, 38n76, 42, 42n87, 43n87, 60n49, 62n59, 68n89, 69n92, 74n122, Galicia 13, 155 169, 174, 175n21, 175n22, 176, 200, 200n6, Georgia 39n79, 42n84, 401n2, 408, 408n28, 201 431 Ireland 15, 79, 93n31, 99n44, 168–196, 380, Germany XI, 23n43, 24n44, 24n45, 28, 33, 385, 386, 386n10, 388 43n88, 108n3, 113, 115, 121, 121n14, 124, Islas de los Estados 283, 284 334n3, 335, 339, 341, 344, 347, 349–351, Islas Marías 274, 285, 296–306, 296n52, 353n52 296n53, 297, 297n57, 297n58, 297n59, Ghana 254, 254n22, 257n38, 257n40, 260n59, 298n62, 298n63, 301n78, 301n79, 301n81, 262n69 301n82, 301n83, 301n84, 301n93, 302n85, Gibraltar 169, 195 302n87, 303n95, 303n96, 304n102, Goa 13, 149–151, 156, 167 304n104, 307, 308 Godebert 228 Isle Royale 226 Gold Coast 172, 175, 254, 254n24, 256, Istanbul 126n1, 139, 139n42, 140, 141 256n36, 256n37, 257, 257n39, 257n41, Italy 28, 57, 66n80, 68, 71n103, 102, 103, 113, 258–260, 259n56, 259n57, 259n58, 134, 315, 316, 316n10, 320n18, 328, 331, 332 260n62, 261n63, 263, 263n77, 263n79, 264, 264n82, 265n88, 270, 270n121 Japan 23, 23n42, 313n3, 331 Green Haven 410 Jinja 270
Johannesburg VII 172n9, 172n12, 173n13, 176n25, 180n37, Juan Fernández 274–282, 276n4, 277n5, 182n44, 184n51, 186n55, 202n14, 202n15, 277n6, 277n8, 278n9, 278n10, 280n15, 204n21, 208n40, 212n56, 215, 215n71, 216, 280n16, 280n17, 280n18, 285, 288, 289, 217n82, 223n8, 249n2, 251, 252, 253n16, 291, 294, 295, 306, 307 254n23, 254n26, 257n38, 261, 261n66, 264, 264n85, 264n86, 264n87, 267, Karaganda 373 267n102, 268n106, 269n114, 270n124, 271, Karelia 368n21 271n127, 334n3, 342n22, 368n21, 378n56, Kavirondo 258, 258n48, 267n103 381n1, 382n5, 384n6, 389n14, 393n24, Kenya 27, 27n52, 250n7, 253n16, 254, 402n7, 411, 436 254n23, 255, 255n29, 256, 256n16, Louisiana 66, 66n78, 129n16, 408, 408n28, 256n34, 258, 258n48, 260n61, 261n65, 430 264n86, 267, 267n102, 267n104, 271, Luanda 20n38, 22, 148, 152–158, 154n18, 271n127 161–165, 167 Kimberley 18, 18n34 Lyon 34n69, 50n4, 113, 430 Kisumu 258 Korea 23, 26n49, 425 Macau 22, 155, 156 Kourou 227 Madagascar 174 Madeira 13, 147, 147n4 La Carraca 13, 14 Madras 21, 201n9, 204n22, 204n23, 205, La Forestière 228, 231 205n25, 206n31, 209, 210, 210n48, Lagos 256, 259n51, 263n75 210n49, 211n51, 214, 215n68, 216, 216n77, Lahore 215, 215n69 217n79, 217n80 Lake Victoria 258 Madrid 22n41, 23n41, 43n91, 88n16, 91n25, 113, Lapataia 284, 289 140n47, 305n106 Las Vegas 436 Maghreb XI Latin America Xn4, XI, 11, 17n31, 18, 41n84, Maine 412 44n92, 202n15, 250n8, 273–309, 273n1, Majdanek 343, 344, 347, 356n60, 357 274n3, 314, 330n57 Malawi 250n7, 267 Leiden 4n5, 15n26, 18n34, 20n38, 39n78, Malay Peninsula 21 74n118, 74n121, 116, 151n13 Malgaches 228 León 88, 88n17, 91n25, 93n32, 174n17, 246 Mantellate (prison) 328n54 Liberia 106n68, 262 Maranhão 13, 151 Lichtenburg 325 Marianna 426 Lima 12n21, 41n83, 273n2, 274n3, 276, 277, Marmara 31 313, 313n3 Maroni 223, 225, 227–231, 230n12, 231n14, Lisbon 13n21, 23n41, 32, 145, 145n1, 146, 149, 233, 236n23, 237n24, 242, 243, 245, 246 150n9, 151–155, 158, 166, 167 Marseilles 122 Lisieux 90 Martinique 238 Ljubljana 134 Maryland 124, 170, 418n80 London Xn5, 8n12, 10n16, 11n17, 12, 12n21, Massachusetts 16n29, 18n34, 407n24, 411, 412 13n21, 13n23, 15n26, 15n27, 16n29, 17n31, Mauritius Xn6, 20n38, 21, 42n87, 62, 62n57, 20n39, 23n43, 24n44, 24n45, 26, 26n50, 62n59, 169, 200 27n52, 28n56, 30n60, 32n63, 33n64, Mauthausen 338, 339, 346 33n66, 35n69, 38n77, 39n80, 40n80, McCarthy Island (Lemain or Lemaine) 173, 42n86, 42n87, 43n90, 44n92, 45n93, 173n16 49n1, 51n8, 56n29, 65n76, 71n101, 84n11, Melilla 13 89n21, 99n44, 100n46, 106n68, 112n5, 113, Mexico 12n21, 14, 274, 285, 296–306, 296n52, 123n17, 133n23, 139n44, 151n10, 169, 298n60, 307, 409
Mexico City 12n21, 296, 296n52, 297n56, 314n5, 316n10, 318n14, 361n2, 361n3, 363n7, 297n58, 297n59, 298n63, 300, 301n78, 364n9, 368n21, 370n31, 370n32, 375n48, 301n82, 302, 302n88, 303, 303n94, 375n50, 376n53, 378n56, 382n3, 394n26, 303n95, 304–305 401n2, 402, 402n6, 402n7, 403n8, 404n11, Michigan 403, 403n9, 412, 430 404n12, 404n13, 405, 405n14, 406n19, Millbank (prison) 153 407n23, 408, 408n25, 408n26, 408n27, Minnesota 408, 409n31, 412, 432 408n29, 408n30, 409, 409n31, 409n38, 410, Mississippi 19 410n39, 410n42, 412n53, 413n54, 415, Missouri 431 415n65, 415n66, 415n67, 415n68, 415n70, Mittelbau-Dora 347, 347n34, 348, 354, 359 416, 416n71, 416n72, 416n73, 416n74, 417, Mocha 176 417n76, 417n78, 420, 421, 421n87, 436 Moluccas 130n18, 176 New York State 416, 417n76, 432n133 Monowitz 344 Nigeria 106n68, 254, 254n24, 255, 255n32, Mons Claudianus 50, 53n17, 70n98, 72n110, 259, 259n51, 259n53 75, 75n127, 75n128, 75n129, 76, 76n130, Nord (department) 237 76n133, 76n134, 77, 77n135, 78 Nordhausen 347 Mons Porphyrites 77 North Africa 14, 18, 129n14, 146–148, 150, 172 Moravia 134 North Carolina 44n91, 409n35, 411, 411n48, Moscow 342, 362n5, 363, 363n6, 364n9, 412, 418, 419n82 364n10, 366n15, 367n20, 372, 377n55 Northern Ireland 385, 386, 388 Mozambique 18n34, 22, 129n13, 154–156, Northern Territories (USSR) 367 162–164 Nouveau Camp 228, 230 Mozambique Island 22, 147–150, 152–154 Numidia 31 Munich 23n43, 115, 126n3, 131n20, 334, 334n1, Nyasaland 249, 267 334n2, 337n11, 340n16, 341n20, 342n23, 346, 357n62 Oaxaca 297 Muscat 148 Ohio 261n65, 270n123, 403n10, 407, 408, 411, 412, 415, 415n69, 416, 416n71, 428, 431 Naples 50n3, 127 Ootacamund 209 Nashville 402 Opava 128 Natzweiler 341, 348n38 Oran 13 Nayarit 297, 298 Oranienburg 338, 346, 346n33 Netherlands IX, 11n17, 28, 41n83, 108, 113, 118, Ostia 67, 324, 324n37 120, 130, 130n18, 149, 341 Ottoman empire 126, 127, 131, 139, 139n42, Neuengamme 23n43, 339, 352, 356 140n47, 141–143, 143n50 New Caledonia 21, 22, 125, 166, 222n3, 244 Owerri 255, 255n32 Newfoundland 129n16 New Jersey 404, 408, 413, 413n55, 415, 422 Palestine 31, 50, 69, 69n94, 266 New Orleans 435 Panama 276n4 New South Wales 21, 169, 171n7, 177–179, 179n34, Pará 13, 149, 151 181, 182, 182n44, 183, 184, 184n53, 193, 194 Parchman Farm 18n34, 19, 401n2 New York VIIn1, VIIn3, XVIn8, 6n7, 7n10, 8n12, Paris 7n9, 17n31, 19n36, 20n38, 20n39, 24n45, 16n29, 16n30, 17n31, 18n33, 18n34, 19n36, 26n50, 29n56, 34n69, 35n69, 36n70, 24n44, 25n48, 26n49, 26n50, 27n52, 38n78, 41n84, 42n85, 43n91, 44n92, 30n60, 32n63, 33n66, 36n73, 37n73, 39n80, 45n93, 89n20, 99n45, 103n59, 108n3, 40n81, 40n82, 41n84, 42n86, 43n90, 44n91, 112n5, 123, 123n17, 123n18, 128n7, 129n15, 44n92, 71n101, 74n118, 76n133, 97n40, 133n23, 222n2, 222n3, 222n4, 222n5, 128n7, 128n10, 132n22, 139n43, 140n47, 223n6, 223n7, 223n9, 229, 237, 239n28, 170n1, 175n21, 249n3, 253n17, 313n2, 313n3, 243, 244, 244n37, 245n40, 248n45, 250n6
Patagonia 157, 283, 308 Robinson Crusoe Island 280 Pawiak (prison) 384, 384n8, 388, 394, Rochefort 122, 224 394n27 Romania 26, 26n49 Pennsylvania 16, 26, 171n8, 404n11, 412, 425 Rome 18n34, 24n45, 28n56, 30n60, 31n60, Peñón de Alhucemas 13 31n62, 33n66, 33n67, 44n92, 49n1, 51n8, Peñón de Vélez 13 53n18, 56, 58n37, 59n42, 59n43, 67n82, Pentonville 26, 153 67n85, 73n114, 73n115, 74n118, 74n120, 79, Pernambuco 292, 293, 293n46 79n2, 84n11, 105, 133, 315–319, 316n10, Peru 36n73, 274n3, 276, 277n6, 282 318n13, 319n15, 321, 323n35, 324, 325, 328, Perugia 321 329, 329n56 Phaeno (Khirbat Faynan) 50, 69, 70n97, 71, Russia 33n64, 40n82, 42n84, 129, 129n15, 71n103, 72n110 368n21, 375n50, 377, 378n56, 384n7 Philadelphia 16, 16n29, 33n66, 99n44, 152, 171n3, 296, 315, 319, 323, 404 Sachsenhausen 335, 338, 339, 341 Philippines 392n21 Sacramento Colony 149 Phoenix 429 Saint-Jean 223, 228–230, 230n12, 231–236, Poland 339, 380 236n23, 238–241, 241n34, 243 Port Blair 205, 205n26 Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni 225 Portland 7n9, 253n18, 261n66, 393 Saint Louis 227–230, 236 Port Philips 169 Saint-Martin-de-Ré 237, 237n25 Portugal 13, 22, 129, 129n13, 144–148, 145n1, Salinas 298 149n7, 150–156, 151n11, 151n12, 154n16, San Diego 425 160, 162, 164–167, 261, 262n69 San Juan 14 Prague 128 San Luis Potosí 296 Principe 13 San Michele (prison) 317–319, 318n12, 322 Proconnesus 31 San Quentin (prison) 409 Prussia 377 Santa Catarina 13, 151 Puebla 296 Santa Cruz 283, 287 Puerto Rico 12n21, 14, 423 Sant Cugat 88, 88n18 Punjab 200, 204, 215n69 Santiago 41n84, 276, 276n4, 277, 280n18, 281n19, 330n57 Quintana Roo 297 São Miguel (prison) 158, 161 Quito 276, 277n6 São Pedro da Barra 157, 158 São Tomé 13, 22, 66, 66n78, 146–148, 150, 155 Rancagua 277 Sardinia 31, 55 Ravensbrück 335, 339, 344, 344n27, 351n48, Scandinavia 28, 79, 86n14 356n60 Schönefeld 351 Recife 147, 292, 294 Scotland 15, 386 Regina Coeli (prison) 327–329, 328n53, Seine (department) 237 328n54 Seine Inférieure (department) 237 Rehilete 298 Senegambia 106n68, 172, 256 Rhodesia 18, 248, 249n1, 254, 254n26, 255, Seville 14 258, 259n52, 259n53, 262, 262n74, 263, Siam 23, 23n42, 44, 145 264n81, 266, 266n96, 269n115 Siberia XIII, XVI, XVIn8, 5n6, 33n64, 129n15, Richmond 20n38, 217n81, 409 367, 369n27, 378n56 Rio de Janeiro 147, 164n23, 296n51 Sicily 55, 56 Robben Island VII, VIIn2, XIV, XV, XVI, Singapore 200, 213n60 42n86, 380, 382, 393, 393n22, 394–398, Sing Sing 16, 40n82, 405, 414n63, 415, 415n65 396n32 Sintra 33, 167
Slavonia 128, 134 Tours 84, 84n11, 85, 88, 89n20, 90, 90n23, 91, 98 South Africa XV, 18, 18n34, 40n80, 42n86, Trabzon 140 43n89, 45n93, 176n25, 251, 251n9, 256, Transylvania 131, 139, 142 380, 388, 389n14, 389n15, 390n16, Tre Fontane (prison) 325, 325n43, 326, 390n17, 391n18, 391n19, 398n37 326n44, 327, 327n48, 327n49, 327n51, 331 South Carolina 18n34, 129n16, 428, 429, Trieste 128 429n120 Tripolitania 18 Southeast Asia 21, 23, 43n87, 199n3, 201, Turin 22n41, 322 213n60, 217 Tuscany 329 Soviet Union XI, 25n48, 342, 343, 346, 361, 364–366, 367n19, 372, 375n50, 376, 378, Uganda 249, 252n13, 258, 259, 259n53, 392 260n61, 264n86, 265n92, 267, 267n101, Spain 11n17, 12n21, 13, 14, 14n25, 22n41, 34n68, 267n102, 270, 270n119, 271, 271n126 71, 87, 88, 93, 102, 105n66, 112, 112n5, 129, United States of America 182n44 129n14, 145n1, 149, 162, 277, 277n6, 296 Uruguay 149 Spanish America 13, 14, 274n3, 276n4, 296 Ushuaia 157, 274, 283, 283n20, 284, 284n25, Speyer 134 284n27, 285, 288–290, 298, 299, Sri Lanka 149 306–308 St. Joseph Island 226 Stockholm 113 Valencia 104n63, 129n14 Straits Settlements 169, 213n60 Valladolid 14 Sumatra 174 Valle Nacional 297 Surrey 124 Valparaíso 279, 280 Sydney 28n56, 41n84, 173n14, 175n23, 176n24, Van Diemen’s Land 21, 62, 62n59, 69, 169, 177n26, 177n27, 178, 178n31, 178n32, 181, 170, 179n34, 181, 181n39, 181n43, 182, 183, 184n53, 194n65 182n44, 183–187, 188n59, 192n62, 193, Sydney Cove 179 194, 194n64, 195 Syracuse 56, 56n28, 59n42 Venice 11n17, 34, 59, 112, 112n5, 127, 133n23 Vic 90, 91, 102, 108n3 Tacna 282 Vienna 6n8, 126, 126n2, 126n3, 127, 127n4, Tanganyika 258, 258n46, 259n50, 259n53, 127n5, 128, 128n7, 128n8, 128n10, 130n19, 260n61, 263n80, 264, 264n83, 264n86, 131n20, 132, 132n22, 133, 133n23, 134, 265, 265n90, 266, 266n93, 266n97, 134n24, 134n25, 134n26, 135n29, 136n31, 266n98, 267, 269n113, 270, 270n120, 136n32, 137, 137n34, 137n36, 138n37, 270n122 140–142, 142n49, 143, 347n34, 349n39 Tangier 147 Vietnam 17n31, 313n3, 331 Tanzania 106n68, 258, 264n85, 267n102 Villa Altieri (prison) 319–321 Tidore 176 Virginia 124, 148n5, 170, 178, 409, 409n31, 434 Tierra del Fuego 283, 283n20, 284, 287–290, Virgin Islands 423 308, XIII Vorkuta 25n48, 368n21, 369 Tigre 228 Timişoara 126, 126n2, 127, 131, 132, 134–136, Wales 15, 21, 99n, 169, 171n7, 177–184, 179n34, 136n31, 136n32, 137–139, 142 181n42, 182n44, 184n53, 193, 194 Timor 22, 149, 155 Walpole 411, 411n44, 414, 414n58, 417, 427 Toledo 14 Warsaw 382n4, 384, 384n7, 384n8, 388, 394, Tollinche 228, 230, 231 394n27, 395n28 Toulon 122, 224 Washington DC 403, 420n86 Touraine 84, 88 Waterloo 179
Weaversville 425 Yemen 176 Western Australia 21, 169, 170, 195 Yucatan 296, 297, 299 West Indies 21, 129n16, 169 White Sea 362 Zimbabwe 254, 254n26 Wisconsin 408, 412, 433 Wrocław 128, 134