5 - Liaquat Ali and Amelia Bennett

Summary

Liaquat Ali: Previous history: Of no importance prior to 1857 but then became a ringleader. Though evidently a coward he is a determined plotter against the British Government. Possesses a great deal of influence amongst Mahomedans, and is connected with Wahabees. Since 1857 he has been engaged in preaching sedition – Father's Name: Mehir Ali – Religion: Mussulman Sheik.

Amy Bennett: I am aged 33 years. I reside in Calcutta my father's name is Captain Horne. He commanded a vessel.

The preceding chapters of this book have explored the life histories of a range of convicts, including Indians, Indo-Europeans and Africans. Their trials, convictions, transportation (and on occasion retransportation) to colonial penal settlements in Mauritius, the Cape, Burma, the Straits Settlements and Australia during the first half of the nineteenth century reveal much about the drawing of lines of social distinction in the Indian Ocean. Clearly, there were layered and multi-directional intersections between colonial understandings of race, religion, masculinity, military service and status in the making of categories of rule, and of society and social transformation. Subaltern Lives has centred individual convicts in a prosopographical analysis that touches necessarily on other marginal and marginalised people in the Indian Ocean, who were not necessarily transportation convicts. They include slaves, ex-slaves, apprentices, indentured labourers, state prisoners, Indo-Europeans and sailors. Collectively, even as, or perhaps rather because, they inhabited the edges of Empire, we are encouraged to approach and to configure colonial archives in ways that open up new subaltern perspectives on histories of and in the Indian Ocean. This biographical approach offers a kaleidoscopic view of their profound impact on colonial knowledge formation, as well as on the cultural, productive and geographical networks of Empire.