Andaman Islands

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Andaman Islands
Satellite photo of the Andaman Islands
Satellite photo of the Andaman Islands
Waters Indian Ocean
Geographical location 12 ° 30 '  N , 92 ° 45'  E Coordinates: 12 ° 30 '  N , 92 ° 45'  E
Andamans (Andaman and Nicobar Islands)
Andaman Islands
Number of islands 204
Main island South Andaman Island
Total land area 6408 km²
Residents 343,739 (2011)
Location of the Andaman Islands
Location of the Andaman Islands
Port Blair
Climate diagram
J F. M. A. M. J J A. S. O N D.
 
 
37
 
29
22nd
 
 
19th
 
30th
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13
 
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80
 
32
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339
 
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458
 
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437
 
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425
 
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309
 
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240
 
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125
 
29
23
Temperature in ° Cprecipitation in mm
Source: India Meteorological Department
Average monthly temperatures and rainfall for Port Blair
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
Max. Temperature ( ° C ) 29.3 30.1 31.2 32.2 31.1 29.6 29.2 29.1 29.1 29.6 29.5 29.3 O 29.9
Min. Temperature (° C) 21.6 21.3 22.1 23.6 23.7 23.5 23.3 23.2 22.7 22.6 22.8 22.6 O 22.8
Precipitation ( mm ) 37.2 18.5 12.9 80.2 339.3 457.7 436.6 436.6 424.8 308.5 240.4 124.9 Σ 2,917.6
Rainy days ( d ) 1.9 1.2 1.1 3.9 15.7 18.9 18.7 19.1 18.0 15.9 12.0 4.4 Σ 130.8
T
e
m
p
e
r
a
t
u
r
29.3
21.6
30.1
21.3
31.2
22.1
32.2
23.6
31.1
23.7
29.6
23.5
29.2
23.3
29.1
23.2
29.1
22.7
29.6
22.6
29.5
22.8
29.3
22.6
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
N
i
e
d
e
r
s
c
h
l
a
g
37.2
18.5
12.9
80.2
339.3
457.7
436.6
436.6
424.8
308.5
240.4
124.9
  Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

The Andamans are a group of 204 islands in the Andaman Sea belonging to the Indian union territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands .

geography

The islands are located about 300 kilometers south-southwest of Cape Negrais on the western tip of the Irrawaddy Division of Myanmar (Burma). The main islands are North , Middle and South Andaman Island (which are also the main islands of Great Andaman ). In the north, the Andamans are separated from the Cocos Islands belonging to Myanmar by the Coconut Channel . Little Andaman forms the southern end of the island chain , away from the island chain to the east are the volcanic islands of Narkondam and Barren Island . The total area of ​​the islands is 6,408 square kilometers, their population is about 340,000, of which only 4,800 are indigenous people.

The largest city and the main town in the Andaman Islands is Port Blair with 108,000 inhabitants. The soils are fertile and, in addition to tea, also bear mango , breadfruit , coconuts and pumpkins .

history

Early history

The indigenous people of the Andaman Islands are Negritos , who probably came to Australia via South Asia in a very early migration - coming from Africa more than 50,000 years ago. They include the Onge , Jarawa , Great Andaman and the almost uncontacted Sentinelese (see also: Spread of man # The settlement of Australia through South Asia ).

In 871 two Arab travelers reported a visit to the Andaman Islands. The Italian traveling salesman Marco Polo also mentions the islands in his travel stories without having visited them himself. The Italian traveling salesmen Niccolo di Conti and Cesare Federici were traveling in the countries of the Indian Ocean around 1440 and 1570 and also reported from the Andaman Islands. Since the Andamans had no economically valuable goods, they were of no interest to European traders. Arabs, Malayans and Chinese all visited the archipelago in search of people for their slave markets.

In 1789 a naval base was established in the Andaman Islands for the British East India Company by the Englishman Archibald Blair , but this settlement was abandoned in 1796.

As a result of the Indian Uprising of 1857 , the East India Company was dissolved by the Government of India Act 1858 and British India , including the Andamans, became a crown colony of Great Britain .

Penal colony

When the British put down the Indian uprising of 1857, the Andamans became a place of exile for the important prisoners they made. On January 15, 1858, the Andaman Islands were officially declared a penal colony by the British government. Since 1858, all long-term British convicts from India have been exiled here. First to the island of Chatham , but because of the lack of water there soon to the island of Ross , both near Port Blair. The first 200 convicts were prisoners of the 1857 uprising that hit the Andaman Islands in 1858.

The convicts were mostly housed in barracks and used as slave labor on the islands. From 1864 to 1867, however, a prison was built for serious criminals on the islet Viper Island near Port Blair, in which heavy forced labor had to be performed.

On February 8, 1872 , while visiting the islands with his wife , Lord Mayo , Viceroy and Governor General of India , was murdered by Sher Ali Pathan, a person who had been sentenced to 15 years in prison by the British and who was exiled to the penal colony on the Andaman Islands. Pathan had already served his sentence in the Andaman Islands but was unable to return to India after his imprisonment. On the orders of the British Queen Victoria , Pathan was sentenced to death and hanged on Viper Island.

In the 1890s construction began on a new large prison in the Andaman Islands, the Cellular Jail near Port Blair. With the completion of the first 138 prison cells in 1895, the cell prison began operations. When the cell prison was opened, the prison on Viper Island was closed and its prisoners transferred to the cell prison. The cell prison was completed in 1906 and now contained 663 cells. In 1909 another 30 cells were added to the prison building.

Since 1910 the Andamans were also used by the British to banish political prisoners from mainland India, and these prisoners were held in the cell prison. Most of the exiles on the Andaman Islands, however, lived in various degrees of captivity as slave labor on the islands.

After a big hunger strike by political prisoners against the inhuman conditions in the cell prison and their politically justified imprisonment, the political prisoners were released in 1937 and released to their respective hometowns through the mediation of Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore . This ended the Andaman era as a place of exile and detention center for political prisoners in 1938.

The importance of the penal colony status for the Andaman Islands is clear from the 1941 census. According to this, 21,316 people lived on the Andaman Islands, 19,489 of them in Port Blair alone. Of the total population in the Andaman Islands, 6186 were convicts. In March 1942 there were 606 prisoners in the cell prison, which adds up to over 5,500 convicts who have been held in various forms from detention in barracks to almost free life on the islands.

In early 1942, around 200 mutinous soldiers of the Royal Indian Army Security Corps and the Central Indian Horse were brought from the Indian mainland to the Andamans. These prisoners were released by the Japanese immediately after the Japanese occupied the islands in March 1942, and were re-imprisoned by the British after their return in October 1945.

A courtyard view of the cell prison

In 1979 the cell prison was declared a "National Memorial" of India and converted into a museum in honor of the fighters imprisoned there by the British for the liberation of India from British colonial rule.

The Andamans in World War II

With the conquest of Burma by the Japanese from December 1941, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands , located southwest of Burma in the Bengali Gulf, also moved into the frontline. For the British, the islands were of no military importance and could not be held against the superiority of the Japanese. For the English, it was about securing India against a Japanese attack, not defending the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

The British had only one company stationed on the Andamans and decided in mid-December 1941 to transfer a battalion with additional guns to the Andamans to protect the port city of Port Blair. In January 1942 the British company lying in Port Blair was exchanged for a battalion of Gurkhas , the 4/10 Gorkha Rifles .

On January 2, 1942, the evacuation of British and Indian officials and their families began. Finally, the troops that had just been transferred to the Andamans were withdrawn by March 12, 1942. On March 13, the last ship with evacuees left Port Blair for the Indian mainland. Further evacuation trips could not be carried out because of the occupation of the Andamans by the Japanese on March 23rd. Around 2,000 soldiers and civilians were transported away by the British before the Japanese occupied the Andaman Islands. It was no longer possible to evacuate more than 100 members of the administration, 16 of them British, and around 400 members of the military and civilian police. Weapons, ammunition, all valuable movable goods such as electrical equipment (telephone and radio technology), mules and trucks should also be removed; the three ships used for the evacuation transports were not sufficient for this.

The few British officers stationed on the neighboring Nicobar Islands were also to be brought out via Port Blair, but on their voyage to Port Blair, the small ship Sophie Marie provided for this purpose drove onto an English sea ​​mine and sank with the entire crew.

The fighting reached the islands for the first time on February 14 and 16, 1942. On these two days, a few Japanese planes attacked Port Blair, but caused only minor damage.

In the first week of March, the British ordered the destruction of all major military facilities and goods, such as docks , fuel and oil stores , the great Chatham sawmill , radio stations and aircraft, before the Japanese arrived. Sea mines were laid off Port Blair, Kalera, Port Meadows and Stuart Sand, one of which was Sophie Marie 's undoing. The mine laying and destruction were still in progress when the Japanese landed. Locals refused, however, to destroy the sawmill on Chatham Island, the largest sawmill in Southeast Asia, and the Burmese naval engineer in charge of the project prevented the shipyard in Port Blair from being blown up .

The occupation of the Andamans was carried out in a joint operation by the Japanese army and the Japanese navy . On March 20, the landing fleet left Penang , an island off the coast of Malaya , with a course for the Andaman Islands. The Japanese naval association consisted of minesweepers , destroyers and cruisers . Outpost boats and three troop carriers had the landing troops on board. On March 22nd the unit reached the Andaman Islands and on March 23rd at 6:30 am the troops began landing in Port Blair.

Under Japanese rule, the Andamans were ruled by a civilian Japanese governor who was under the command of the Japanese military headquarters in the Nicobar Islands. The Nicobar Islands, which were occupied by the Japanese in June 1942, were militarily more important to the Japanese than the Andamans, which is why a military administration of the Japanese Navy was set up on the Nicobar Islands, to which the Andamans were also subject.

Subhas Chandra Bose tours the cell prison, December 30, 1943

On October 29, 1943, the Indian Provisional Government Azad Hind (Free India) was founded by Subhas Chandra Bose in Singapore , and at the end of December 1943 Bose visited the Andaman Islands in his capacity as head of the Indian government in exile and as commander-in-chief of the Indian National Army . As part of British India , Bose saw the Andaman Islands as Indian territory liberated by the Japanese, and the Japanese also officially recognized the Andaman and Nicobar Islands as part of the new Indian state of Bose. A few men of the Indian National Army were stationed in the Andaman Islands, and on February 14, 1944, a "Chief Commissioner" of the Indian Provisional Government arrived in Port Blair. However, only the "Education Department" of the island administration was subordinated to the Chief Commissioner by the Japanese. The actual administration of the islands remained largely in Japanese hands.

Using local people who were obliged to do forced labor, the Japanese built bunkered artillery positions on the islands at sea in order to repel Allied attacks from the sea. Forced laborers were also used to build roads and airfields. The Japanese have also brought about 850 Chinese and Malaysian workers to the islands.

In the spring of 1944 the British planned to recapture the Andaman Islands under the code word “Buccaneer”, but for the landings in France in June 1944 ( Overlord ) and August 1944 ( Anvil ) all available transport ships were needed and so Operation Buccanneer was canceled.

Air strikes have been carried out with long-range bombers by the Royal Air Force from mainland India since 1943 . In the summer of 1944, British aircraft carriers began air raids on the Andaman Islands. In 1945 air strikes intensified and British destroyers bombarded targets on the coast and also attacked Japanese shipping in the Andaman region. The main target of the attacks from sea and air was Port Blair and its surroundings and the port of the city.

As early as mid-1943, the Japanese supply ships for the Andaman Islands had been attacked by Allied submarines and aircraft, and the supply situation for the population and the occupiers deteriorated. Since the beginning of 1945, the Andamans and the Nicobars were completely cut off from Japanese supplies by the British fleet in the Indian Ocean. Attempts by the Japanese to withdraw some of their troops from the islands also failed due to the intervention of the British fleet.

As a result of the complete blockade of the Andaman Islands, the food situation on the islands deteriorated further. The Japanese attempted to remedy the problem by forcibly deporting the local population from Port Blair to the countryside or other islands. During one of these deportations in 1945, several hundred people were transported to the island of Havelock in landing boats and were forcibly driven from the boats into the water off the island. Hundreds of these deportees perished on Havelock, mainly from starvation.

After the armistice in Asia on August 15, 1945, the Japanese governor of the Andaman Islands announced the end of the war to the population on August 21. In order to alleviate the urgent need on the Andamans, the Allied side first sent a Mercy Ship with food and clothing to the Andamans. On September 26, 1945, the Bandara arrived in Port Blair, accompanied by the small warship INS Narbada . Only on October 7, 1945, the 116th Indian Infantry Brigade, the first British troops arrived in Port Blair and thus on the Andaman Islands. On October 9, the official surrender of the Japanese troops in the Andaman Islands took place in Port Blair. The 15,000 Japanese soldiers there were prisoners of war and used in the reconstruction of the islands in 1945 and 1946.

Around 3,000 local people were killed during the Japanese occupation. Exact figures are not known, as the Japanese destroyed all documents about their occupation time on the Andamans before their surrender. Approximately 1800 died from Allied air raids, malnutrition and disease, 1200 from torture and murder by the Japanese. The Japanese suspicion that the locals would espionage for the enemy cost many victims among the population, and those suspected of espionage often paid their suspicions with their lives, often under torture. The Japanese fears were triggered, among other things, by the interception of radio messages from the Andamans, which were not sent by locals, but by British spy troops sent to the islands.

The Andaman Islands since 1945

On February 7, 1946, the Andamans passed from British military administration to British civil administration under a Chief Commissioner .

Map with the peoples and languages ​​of the islands, 1923

With the division of British India into a Hindu and a Muslim state shortly before independence in 1947, at the will of Muslim politicians, a dispute arose over the future affiliation of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to one of the two new states. Nehru cited the 1941 census as evidence that the two archipelagos belong to a Hindu state, India. This census showed a total of 34,000 people in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, but only 8,000 of them professed Islam.

When India's independence from Great Britain was in sight, political and military circles in Great Britain, such as the Minister for India in the British Cabinet, Patrice Lawrence, tried to keep the islands as a military strategic base with the United Kingdom. In March 1947, the British military proposed setting up air bases in Port Blair and on Car Nicobar .

The dispute over the future affiliation of the islands was decided by the British Viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten . He recommended to the British government that the Andaman and Nicobar Islands be added to the future Hindu Indian state, and so it happened.

The partition of India in 1947 resulted in the mass exodus of Hindus from the newly formed Pakistan , and thousands of the Bengali refugees from East Pakistan were settled in the Andaman Islands by the Indian government. The immigration of Indians from the mainland to the Andaman Islands continues to this day.

population

Andamans catching turtles, around 1900
Negritos, around 1900

The natives of the Andaman ( Andaman ) include the Onge (currently around 100 people living), Jarawa (300), Greater Andaman (58) and the virtually uncontacted Sentinelese (100), all of whom are linguistically, culturally and also genetically linked to one another are related. The Bo tribe became extinct with 85-year-old Boa Senior , who died on February 5, 2010. They were hunters and hunters, belonged to the " Negritos " and represented the remainder of one of the oldest sections of the population in South Asia. Most of the indigenous people fell victim to the colonization and use of the islands as prison camps.

In 1858 the British colonial power estimated the number of natives on the Andaman Islands at 8,000. The censuses carried out later every ten years showed the following figures for the native inhabitants of the islands:

year Natives
1901 2310
1911 1317
1921 0903
1931 0510
1951 10 323
1961 10 748
1971 10 431
1981 10 422
1 there were probably more alive than the recorded people

The sharp decline in the indigenous population is mainly due to deaths from introduced diseases.

The total population in the Andaman Islands was:

year Residents
1951 030,000
1961 080,000
1971 120,000
1981 200,000
1991 280,000

At the time of the 2001 census, the Andamans had a population of 314,084, the majority of whom were Indian immigrants. The tsunamis as a result of the seaquake of December 26, 2004 off Sumatra , according to official estimates of December 29, 2004, around 5000 inhabitants of the Andaman Islands are said to have died.

languages

The Andaman languages ​​of the indigenous people are among the oldest languages ​​in South Asia and, according to current estimates, are not related to any other language group.

literature

  • Heinrich Harrer : The last five hundred. Expedition to the dwarf peoples on the Andamans . Ullstein, Berlin et al. 1977, ISBN 3-550-06574-4 .
  • AR Radcliffe-Brown : The Andaman Islanders. 1st Free Press paperback edition, 2nd printing. Free Press, New York NY 1967. (1st print. 1964, OCLC 336615 , online at Internet Archive )
  • Aparna Vaidik: Imperial Andamans. Colonial Encounter and Island History. Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills et al. 2010, ISBN 978-0-230-57605-6 ( Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series ).
  • TR Sareen: Sharing the Blame. Subhas Chandra Bose and the Japanese Occupation of the Andamans 1942-1945. SS Publishers, Delhi / India around 2004, ISBN 81-85396-33-7 .
  • Jayant Dasgupta: Japanese in the Andaman & Nicobar Islands. Manas Publications, New Delhi 2002, ISBN 81-7049-138-X .
  • Geo. No. 1, October 25, 1976, Verlag Gruner + Jahr, pp. 8-24.

Web links

Commons : Andamans  - Collection of images, videos, and audio files
Wiktionary: Andamans  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Phillip Endicott et al .: The Genetic Origins of the Andaman Islanders. In: The American Journal of Human Genetics. Volume 72, No. 1, 2003, pp. 178-184, doi: 10.1086 / 345487
  2. Heinrich Harrer: The last five hundred. Expedition to the dwarf peoples on the Andamans . Ullstein, Berlin 1983, ISBN 3-548-32057-0 , pp. 25-27.
  3. Jayant Dasgupta: Japanese in the Andaman & Nicobar Islands . Manas Publications, New Delhi 2002, ISBN 81-7049-138-X , pp. 26-29.
  4. Baban Phaley: General Knowledge Andaman and Nicobar Islands . Sarswati Prakashan, Nagpur / India around 2004, pp. 8–9.
  5. Baban Phaley: General Knowledge Andaman and Nicobar Islands . Sarswati Prakashan, Nagpur / India around 2004, p. 27.
  6. Baban Phaley: General Knowledge Andaman and Nicobar Islands . Sarswati Prakashan, Nagpur (India) around 2004, pp. 39 and 49.
  7. ^ TR Sareen: Sharing the Blame. Subhas Chandra Bose and the Japanese Occupation of the Andamans 1942-1945. SS Publishers, Delhi / India 2002, ISBN 81-85396-33-7 , pp. 9 and 16.
  8. Jayant Dasgupta: Japanese in the Andaman & Nicobar Islands . Manas Publications, New Delhi 2002, ISBN 81-7049-138-X , p. 123.
  9. Baban Phaley: General Knowledge Andaman and Nicobar Islands . Sarswati Prakashan, Nagpur / India around 2004, p. 39.
  10. ^ N. Iqbal Singh: The Unknown Martyr. Diwan Singh Kalepani. Information and Public Relations Department, Punjab, Chandigarh / India, p. 35.
  11. Jayant Dasgupta: Japanese in the Andaman & Nicobar Islands . Manas Publications, New Delhi 2002, ISBN 81-7049-138-X , pp. 71-83.
  12. Jayant Dasgupta: Japanese in the Andaman & Nicobar Islands . Manas Publications, New Delhi 2002, ISBN 81-7049-138-X , pp. 107-109.
  13. Kenneth Poolman: Illustrious . New English Library, London 1974, pp. 124-127.
  14. John Wellham: With Naval Wings . Spellmount, London 2007, ISBN 978-1-86227-379-5 , p. 173.
  15. John Wellham: With Naval Wings . Spellmount, London 2007, ISBN 978-1-86227-379-5 , p. 183.
  16. Max Arthur: Lost voices of the Royal Navy . Hodder and Stougthon, London 2005, ISBN 0-340-83814-0 , pp. 518 and 524.
  17. Jayant Dasgupta: Japanese in the Andaman & Nicobar Islands . Manas Publications, New Delhi 2002, ISBN 81-7049-138-X , pp. 101-104, 115-116.
  18. Baban Phaley: General Knowledge Andaman and Nicobar Islands . Sarswati Prakashan, Nagpur / India around 2004, pp. 51–52.
  19. Jayant Dasgupta: Japanese in the Andaman & Nicobar Islands . Manas Publications, New Delhi 2002, ISBN 81-7049-138-X , p. 144.
  20. ^ Frank P. Myka: Decline of Indigenous Populations. The Case of the Andaman Islanders. Jaipur / India 1993, ISBN 81-7033-208-7 , pp. 43 and 138.
  21. ^ Frank P. Myka: Decline of Indigenous Populations. The Case of the Andaman Islanders . Jaipur / India 1993, ISBN 81-7033-208-7 , p. 141.