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February 16, 2021

UW books in brief: Historian Anand Yang explores British ‘penal transportation’; world music textbooks by Patricia Shehan Campbell

Penal transportation — the shipping of convicted criminals to other continents — was an element of British imperial rule for hundreds of years. A new book by Anand Yang, UW professor of history, studies the plight of Indians incarcerated in Southeast Asia for criminal and political offenses committed in colonial South Asia.

“Empire of Convicts: India Penal Labor in Colonial Southeast Asia” was published in January by University of California Press. Yang is also with the UW Jackson School of International Studies.

Anand Yang

“From the 17th century onward, penal transportation was a key strategy of British imperial rule, exemplified by deportations first to the Americas and later to Australia,” publisher’s notes state.

“Case studies from the insular prisons of Bengkulu, Penang, and Singapore illuminate another carceral regime in the Indian Ocean world that brought South Asia and Southeast Asia together through a global system of forced migration and coerced labor.” The book tells of Indian convicts “and how they exercised agency in difficult situations, fashioning their own worlds and even becoming ‘their own warders.'”

Historian David Gilmartin of North Carolina State University wrote: “Meticulously researched, this is social history at its best.”

Read Yang’s essay in the UC Press blog, “Forgotten Histories of Indian Convicts in Colonial Southeast Asia.”

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Two world music textbooks from Patricia Shehan Campbell 

Patricia Shehan Campbell, professor of music education and ethnomusicology, co-authored and edited two textbooks on world music last autumn.

“World Music Pedagogy: Teaching World Music, Vol. VII: Teaching World Music in Higher Education,” with William Coppola of the University of North Texas and David Hebert of Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, was published by Routledge.

“Global Music Cultures: An Introduction to World Music,” edited by Campbell and Bonnie Wade of the University of California, Berkeley, was published by Oxford University Press. Campbell is the Donald E. Petersen Professor of Music and chair of music education in the UW School of Music.

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