Empires and Colonial Incarceration in the Twentieth Century

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